I was just told that one house had almost 100 bids!
Strike 5 for DS and fiancee. They have decided to widen their net.
My daughter bought a house. We are done.
There were a lot of bids. Most were hoping for a deal.
A few bids were very competitive.
My daughter’s future father in law, my future son in law, and myself independently crunched numbers to figure out what the bid should be and our numbers were very similar. The broker said my daughter and future son in law should bid a little more…so they did…
A new high for the area…
We think the house is great. Better than the one my daughter didn’t get in many ways.
Like a poster said, we are hoping it works out over the coming years!
Jym626, Is your son going to leave the city?
Nope - unlikely they will leave the city- but maybe consider other neighborhoods.
And congrats!! She beat out almost 100 bidders???
Great news dstark! I’m really happy for you and for her that you finally got one.
The house with 100 bids was a different house. There were a lot fewer bids than that…but there were tons for my daughter’s place.
My daughter’s broker helped tremendously. She called around and got a good idea what homes that were in escrow were going for and how many bids these homes received. This gave us a good idea what is happening in the market in real time. Prices are still rising.
My daughter paid way more than the listing price. The listing prices are a joke. Some of the sales prices are over 20 percent more than the listing prices as you know.
My daughter was thinking of paying 10 percent over list for one house. The place sold for over 25 percent of list. The place isn’t great. 
I think listing well below market drives traffic to a house. Makes the house come alive during an open house. There were tons of people looking at my daughter’s place. And I do think the sales price ends up slightly higher than it would be otherwise. Not a tremendous amount. But a few percent can add up.
Is your son getting married this weekend?
Mazel Tov!
The housing market is hot right now where we live- Ventura County, CA. Our neighbor just sold his house in 2 days with 11 offers. He priced it a little over market value (he thought) and 9 of the 11 offers were over asking price. Our son just bought his first house in Denver and made offers on about 6 houses before he got this one. He learned quickly that any offer at or below asking price had no chance at all. I don’t think I would ever price a house under the market value- I don’t see the point. I would rather price it a little high and come down as necessary. Right now, there is not much on the market where we live and houses are selling quickly and for more than they should.
I am glad Denver is hot. My future son in law is going to sell a house there this year. Actually, I think the house might be in a suburb of Denver. I don’t know exzctly where it is. LOL!
I hope that area is hot too!
Greenwitch, thanks!
Not sure if you were asking me, dstark. The wedding is still several mos away. As you know, they have been very aggressive in bids- sometimes 30%+ above asking… The cash offers win.
Your BevMo remark threw me off.
My daughter’s bid had zero contingencies. Made her bid similar to an all cash bid. Maybe better. My daughter’s bid was the cleanest. This can be dangerous!
Do you guys worry about the kids buying in a potential bubble? The house we now live in was purchased at the height of a crazy market (crazy for Dallas anyway). When we looked at the house, the owner had just reduced his asking price (equal to his purchase price) by 200K. We purchased it 200K under THAT price.
The guy was so upside down, he had to bring a check to closing, and believe you me, even though he can well afford it, he was not a happy camper.
Yes, thats a big concern, Nrdsb4. But short of the earth shaking, even if the market cools, the prices seem to stay flat in SF, not drop notably 
I am a little concerned but I try to take the long term view…
And somebody posted this in another thread…
http://www.theatlantic.com/china/archive/2013/11/why-chinese-people-buy-so-many-homes-in-palo-alto/281234/
My kids can afford a place now…what if prices rise another 25 percent?
They may be out of the market and never be able to get in the market…
There is little land here to build more housing.
We have to build up…like NYC…but then we don’t have the infrastucture…
I look where my daughter is going to live…where are the empty lots? I don’t see very many…
Prices are not up that much over time…prices are up 1 to 2 percent over inflation…
I guess that does add up…
nrdsb4-
It all depends on what is driving the housing prices. If you look at the pre-2008 housing bubble, prices in markets like Tampa and Las Vegas were based more on speculation than the local economy, while in other areas, like the Bay Area or the NYC area, housing prices did go down, but the amount that was based on speculation was not as much, there were jobs and an economy supporting it, whereas places like Tampa and Vegas and the like were based in people speculating, along with mortgages allowing people to buy homes at prices the local economy could not support.
In HI, there has never been much of a drop in prices either. At best, there is a cooling and plateau before prices go up again. There is only so much land in HI as well, especially in Honolulu.
The idea of dropping the asking price in auctions is seen all the time at auto auctions for classic cars, where they will remove the reserve (the lowest price they will take), to stimulate demand. The idea is that if let’s say they set the reserve price to be 50k on some old corvette let’s say, that people will be intimidated and not bid, but if I remove the auction reserve, that if the auctioneer starts it out at let’s say 25k, people will get excited and bid each other up starting from that point. It doesn’t always work, it could be that the car stalls at 35k, and the seller gets much less then he asked, but conventional wisdom is once goaded, people will compete to raise the price. The other thing with any auction is that the higher the price, the less people bidding, with car auctions you can have 15 or 20 people bidding at 25k, then when it gets to 30k less are doing it, and by the time you get to the top, you have maybe 2 or 3 people bidding.
Gosh - you guys live in a different universe. We bought our first house in '94 for about 90 grand, about 10% below the asking price. When we sold it in 2000, it went about 6 months after we had moved out. Similarly, the house we bought for 300 something was on the market for a few months and we paid a few tens of thousands below the asking price. I hadn’t heard of this concept of paying above the asking price.
It is a totally different RE world there. They have 1-2 open houses and identify one day to submit the best and final offer. Then the seller looks at the multiple offers (many are cash offers, no contingencies, close in like 3 days) and are 30% above asking. Ridiculous.