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GRAND RAPIDS, MI – The West Michigan real estate market has begun heating up in earnest, according to Terry Westbrook, president of the Grand Rapids Association of Realtors.

After taking two listings for homes in the Forest Hills area on a recent Monday, Westbrook said he had offers accepted for both by the following Wednesday evening.

One of the homes, priced in the $250,000 range, had eight showings that yielded four offers, Westbrook said. “The low written offer was for list price,” he said. The other home sold for within $1,000 of its asking price, he said.

Local Realtors reported 1,167 pending sale offers for single family homes last month, an 11 percent increase over March 2012, according to the latest monthly statistics from the Grand Rapids Association of Realtors. March pending sales also exceeded February’s sales by 26 percent.

Home sellers also entered the market in greater numbers last month. Local realtors took 1,657 new listings last month, an 18 percent increase over March 2012 and a 38 percent increase over February’s listing activity.

Despite the surge of new inventory, Westbrook said local Realtors still need more homes to meet the demand of the resurgent home buying market.

Homes that got offers during March were on the market for an average of 62 days, far down from last year’s average of 86 days, according to the monthly report.

Meanwhile, the average price of a home sold last month was $150,685, a 20 percent increase over March 2012. So far this year, the average home has sold for $142,386, a 16 percent increase over the first quarter of 2012.

Westbrook said he expects home buying activity to heat up even more with the arrival of spring weather.

Appraisers who once created a drag on rising home prices have become more accommodating, Westbrook said. “Now is the time to get your house on the market,” he said.

Grand Rapids Real Estate News: 3 Tips For Home Shoppers This Spring - With shrinking inventories and more competition, buyers are finding they have less negotiating power in today’s market. CNNMoney recently highlighted some of the following tips to help home buyers be more successful in their purchases this spring:

1. Lowball offers are a waste of time: “The days when you could scoop up a house for 20 percent less than the list price are long gone,” the article notes. Homes are selling much closer to their asking price nowadays, surveys show. Michael Murphree, a real estate professional in Birmingham, Ala., says he advises his clients that if homes are selling below the list price in an area but are still being sold in less than two months to make an offer that is no more than 2 to 3 percent below the asking price. If homes are selling above the listing price, Murphree advises clients to make their first offer at the full asking price.

2. How to win a bidding war: To do that, agents say come with a higher price and fewer contingencies, and be flexible with when you can move in. In some transactions, the sellers could be left trying to find new housing for themselves, so some real estate professionals suggest leaving the closing date blank on the contract and allow the seller to fill it in, or be willing to negotiate a leaseback if the seller needs more time to vacate.

3. Shop around for financing: Credit unions and small banks tend to offer the lowest rates and may even be less strict about their underwriting, Guy Cecala, publisher of Inside Mortgage Finance, told CNNMoney. Cecala recommends getting a good-faith estimate from one lender and then showing it to other lenders to see if they can beat it.

Workers put the finishing touches on the Grand Rapids Art Museum on Sept. 9, 2007. The museum opened to the public a few weeks later on Oct. 5.

GRAND RAPIDS, MI — Economic development strides since the mid-1990s have landed Grand Rapids on yet another Forbes list, this one for U.S. cities with “emerging downtowns.”Although not competitively ranked, Grand Rapids joins cities like Denver, Des Moines, Detroit, Cincinnati, Milwaukee and Cleveland on the list of cities that are attracting reinvestment and population growth downtown.

The list appeared alongside a Forbes story about how the “young and the restless” demographic is driving reinvestment into core urban business districts.

Forbes cites the “billions in public-private funding” that has helped develop downtown projects like the Van Andel Arena, the DeVos Place convention center and Michigan State University’s College of Human Medicine headquarters on the Medical Mile.

Heartside redevelopments like the Cherry Street Landing project are alluded to in the list, which features an MLive photo of the city’s iconic Blue Bridge during a rubber duck race on the Grand River during last September’s Celebration on the Grand.

“Rockford Construction has converted more than a dozen abandoned warehouses and office buildings into 400,000 square feet of updated residential, retail and office space. This summer will welcome the $30 million Downtown Market, a year-round culinary marketplace, spanning 130,000 square feet and the city plans to build a rapid transit bus line that will more easily cart people from the suburbs to Grand Rapids’ downtown.“

The latest Forbes list follows the magazine’s ranking of Grand Rapids as the No. 1 city in the country for raising a family last April. More recently, Forbes ranked Grand Rapids among the top 10 happiest cities for workers in the U.S.

In July 2011, Forbes listed Grand Rapids as having the most optimistic jobs forecast nationwide for summer hiring.

In a kind of break from tradition, Forbes included Detroit on the list of emerging downtowns because of its attraction of young professionals thanks to efforts by billionaire Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert.

In January, Forbes listed Detroit as the No. 1 “most miserable” city in the U.S., and as the “most violent” in October.

Take a look at this clip from CNBC.com regarding the rise in prices in the current housing market:

CNBC Realty Check Video

See what people are saying about Grand Rapids Realtor, Cheryl Grant. Simply click here!