Less than a day after realtor Andrea White listed a three-bedroom home in Sacramento, California in March, she received a cash offer. The buyer, who hadn’t even seen the home in person, was willing to pay $ 520,000, White said. That was $ 21,000 above the asking price and 37% more than what the seller had paid for the ranch-style home just two years ago.
Accepting the offer was the easy part. Mrs. White then had to call 17 other agents who had scheduled tours of the house to inform them that it was off the market.
Ms. White, who works for brokerage Redfin Corp. and has been an agent since 2014, has never seen anything like the sales craze taking over her Northern California town. “It’s exhausting,” he said. “I am speechless. It is heartbreaking for buyers; it is a celebration for sellers.”
Last year has been the hottest for sales activity in 14 years. Home values are rising in virtually every corner of the U.S., and median sales prices in dozens of metropolitan areas have seen double-digit percentage increases from the previous year, according to Zillow Group Inc. in Boise. In Idaho, the median sales price increased nearly 25% in January from a year earlier, while in Stamford, Connecticut, it increased 19%.
“Prices have gone up pretty much everywhere,” said Mark Vitner, senior economist at Wells Fargo & Co. “It’s surprising to see home prices rebound so quickly, by this magnitude, so early in an economic recovery.”