New homes, the hottest sector of the real estate market, got even hotter in September as sales hit the fastest pace in two and a half years.

Sales of newly built, single-family homes rose 5.7 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 389,000 units in September, according to newly released figures from HUD and the U.S. Census Bureau. This is the fastest sales pace recorded since April of 2010.

“Combined with consistent, positive reports on housing starts, permits, prices and builder confidence in recent months, today’s data provides further confirmation that a gradual but steady housing recovery is underway across much of the nation,” said Barry Rutenberg, chairman of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) and a home builder from Gainesville, Fla. “Consumers who have been on the sidelines during the past few years are deciding now is the time to go forward with a new-home purchase, assuming they can qualify for a good mortgage under today’s exceedingly stringent guidelines.”

“New-home sales this year have consistently and significantly out-paced their year-ago levels as favorable interest rates, rising prices and improving consumer confidence have driven demand higher,” noted NAHB Chief Economist David Crowe. “Meanwhile, despite a small increase in the inventory of new homes on the market in September, the number of completed new homes for sale is now at an all-time low and the month’s supply is at its tightest since October 2005. This is an indication that builders continue to have a tough time obtaining construction credit, even as demand for new homes increases.”

Three out of four regions registered substantial gains in new-home sales this September, including the Northeast’s 16.7 percent increase, the South’s 16.8 percent increase and the West’s 3.9 percent increase. The Midwest was the exception to the rule, with a 37.3 percent decline.

Meanwhile, the inventory of new homes for sale inched slightly upward to a still-low 145,000 units in September, which is a 4.5-month supply at the current sales pace.

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The continuing decline in listing inventories that is choking home sales this fall inspired one of the Internet’s leading real estate Web sites to take a fresh approach.

Zillow today began displaying 1.8 million pre-foreclosure and foreclosed properties in its home search for free, providing buyers information on homes are not yet listed for sale and can’t be found on any Multiple Listing Service (MLS), nor are they freely available on other real estate sites.

With inventories of listed homes falling by 20 percent over the past year, buyers now will able to see a broader inventory in their market, both pre-market and for-sale, even if they can’t make an offer on homes that are not yet on the market. Zillow’s introduction of pre-market inventory enables buyers to see not only homes that are currently listed for sale, but homes that will soon be listed for sale.

“This is another tremendous step forward in consumer empowerment. Zillow is taking information that was really only available to a select group – in this case, savvy investors – and making it more easily available to interested home buyers,” said Spencer Rascoff, Zillow’s CEO. “What’s more, bringing this information to light, and taking this inventory out of the shadows, can help bring these homes to market faster than ever before.”

Zillow’s pre-market inventory includes:

• More than 1.5 million pre-foreclosure properties: Homes where the lender has initiated foreclosure proceedings or an auction has been scheduled.
• 250,000 foreclosed properties: Homes that are owned by a bank or a lender but have not yet been listed for sale.
• More than 147,000 Make Me Move® properties: This is a Zillow feature where homeowners have named a “dream price” for which they would potentially sell their home.

Data on these properties include:

• Foreclosure Estimate: Zillow’s estimate of the sale price of the home if sold as a foreclosure, in addition to the percentage and dollar discount this represents off fair market value.
• Number of beds and baths, square footage and historical sales and listing history.
• Foreclosure details, including: timeline of the foreclosure process, foreclosing loan amount, unpaid balance, lender, trustee and/or attorney information.

Zillow also announced it is launching the Zillow Foreclosure Center, which provides consumers with information and how-to guides on navigating the foreclosure process and answers frequently asked questions about foreclosures.

Additionally, with this launch, Zillow is surfacing addresses and detailed information for more than 67,000 foreclosure listings (bank-owned homes currently listed for sale) in its for-sale search category.

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