South Florida home prices increased 6% in March compared to a year ago, but the biggest gains nationwide are happening in the Pacific Northwest.
Seattle led the country with a 12.3% annual price increase, data from the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller home price index show.
Portland, Ore., was next at 9.2%, followed by Dallas (8.6%) and Denver (8.4%).
The tri-county region in South Florida beat the national average price increase of 5.8%.
Limited supplies of homes for sale have pushed prices higher in South Florida and across the country, analysts say.
David M. Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at S&P, said in a statement it's unclear when price increases will begin to taper off.
Blitzer said for-sale properties are hard to find, in part because owners are staying in their homes longer. Higher interest rates also might be discouraging owners from selling, he said.
"While prices cannot rise indefinitely, there is no way to tell when rising prices and mortgage rates will force a slowdown in housing," he said.
Svenja Gudell, chief economist for the Zillow website, agrees that the market for low- and mid-priced homes will continue favoring sellers.
"Prepared, patient buyers that have been pre-qualified and have done their research will find the most success," she said in a statement. "And sooner or later, these conditions will change as builders bring more inventory on line, more home sellers come out of the woodwork and home price appreciation cools in the face of slowly rising mortgage interest rates.
"But for now and the foreseeable future, I'm not exactly holding my breath."
Ron Shuffield, CEO of EWM Realty International in South Florida, said homes priced at $500,000 and under are most in demand.
"We will continue to see buyers at that price point anxious about finding something because those houses don't stay on the market for very long," he said.
The outlook for the upper end of the market is the complete opposite, said Liz Caldwell, a real estate agent for Premier Estate Properties in Fort Lauderdale.
Homes priced at $1 million or more are languishing as buyers and sellers lack motivation to complete deals, Caldwell said.
"There's really no sense of urgency on either side of the [closing] table," Caldwell said.
South Florida last topped the Case-Shiller index with the nation's largest price increases in August, September and October of 2014.
Despite steady gains over the past five years, prices in the metro region were 21 percent lower in March than their peak in December 2006, as measured by Case-Shiller's index.
Analysts say the index is one of the best measures of home prices nationally because it tracks the price of the same house over time. But it lags data from local Realtor boards by one month.
Realtor boards across South Florida released figures last week showing annual median price increases for existing, single-family homes in April.
Palm Beach County's median was $327,000, up 7%. Broward's median also rose 7 percent, to $330,000, while the Miami-Dade increased 12% to $320,000. The median means half sold for more and half for less.
While some buyers are concerned about higher prices possibly leading to another housing bubble, Val Chiasson, a Boca Raton-based appraiser, said he doesn't see that happening.
The housing bust that started in 2006 was due in large part to questionable lending standards, but lenders today are much more careful, he said.
"If the market is inflating, it's not being held up by some false demand," Chiasson said. "The demand is real."
