PHP: What's the fastest way to query MySQL? Because PDO is painfully slow

I need to perform a simply query.

Literally, all I need to perform is:

SELECT price, sqft, zipcode FROM homes WHERE home_id = X

When I use PHP PDO, which I've read is the recommended way to connect to a MySQL database, simply creating the connection takes a measured 610ms.

My code is below:

try {
    $conn_str = DB . ':host=' . DB_HOST . ';dbname=' . DB_NAME;
    $dbh = new PDO($conn_str, DB_USERNAME, DB_PASSWORD);
    $params = array();    
    $sql = 'SELECT price, sqft, zipcode FROM homes WHERE home_id = :home_id';
    $params[':home_id'] = X;
    $stmt = $dbh->prepare($sql);    
    $stmt->execute($params);
    $result_set = $stmt->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC);
    // json output  
    ob_start("ob_gzhandler");
    header('Content-type: text/javascript; charset=utf-8');
    print "{'homes' : ";
    print json_encode( $result_set );
    print '}';
    ob_end_flush();
    $dbh = null;
} catch (PDOException $e) {
    die('Unable to connect');
}

Question: What's the fastest way for me to connect to my MySQL database to perform the query above?