When Patrick and Tricia Nieser, both natives of Cleveland’s east suburbs, moved back to Northeast Ohio last month from Cincinnati’s Hyde Park neighborhood, they bought a $270,000 house on Belle Avenue in Lakewood.

Looking at further outlying suburbs on either side of town was not an option, because the couple sought the same walkable, close-to-activities location they had in the Queen City. They looked at 15 houses — twice the national average — and passed on several because they were overpriced and lost out on others because they were outbid. When the 1908-vintage charmer came on the market, they relied on photos of the property and tours by family members as they bid on the three-bedroom home — sight unseen, as they were out of town. They landed what Patrick Nieser called “a fair deal.” Welcome to post-housing bust Lakewood as the streetcar-era inner-ring suburb is embraced by a new wave of buyers and benefits from the pent-up demand of the long housing bust. In Lakewood, old dive bars have been replaced by cool ones. A resurgent downtown has given birth to multiple eateries. The suburb’s walkability, its ample and charming front porches, a reputation for good police and strong — and recently, extensively renovated — schools have given its home market a surprising boom. Moreover, the suburb shows the impact that declining inventory of existing homes has on the market. Scott Phillips, CEO of Keller Williams Greater Cleveland, said, “A ‘stable’ market is six months of inventory. A ‘hot’ market is three months. This is an ‘insane’ market.” That is because there is less than a month of inventory of Lakewood single-family homes in the $100,000-to-$250,000 price range, the range for a typical first-time home-buyer. In Cuyahoga County as a whole, there is 2.5 months of such inventory. Michael Boich, a Keller Williams agent who lives in Lakewood’s “Birdtown” neighborhood — so named thanks to street names such as Thrush and Lark — confirmed that the city has little inventory in the first-time buyer price range. “Listings on some properties last for days, if not hours,” Boich said. “It’s selling close to or above the asking price. The biggest qualifier for Lakewood is if it’s done right and priced right. Just being old is not enough. It has to be updated and relevant for the next 50 years.” Advising clients on pricing also is tough. Agents say they see houses constantly sell at higher-than-expected prices that they considered overpriced, and worry rising prices will cool things down. “They say you don’t want to be the highest-price house in the neighborhood or on the street, but that number keeps changing,” Boich said. For instance, an investor-remodeled Elbur Avenue colonial that Boich listed for $336,900 and thought would take 40 days to sell went for $10,000 above asking price in two days. “They have to be immaculate,” Boich added. “They have to be priced right, but there’s a changing of the guard underway in Lakewood.” He considers Lakewood a microcosm of Northeast Ohio, noting that within its 6-mile length, home prices range from as low as $20,000 to $1 million.