Bidding sight-unseen with contingencies is not hard. Sight-unseen with a no-contingency offer? Now we are talking. 
44% of buyers bid sight unseen? That’s a lot higher than I’d expect.
I don’t really believe the 44% number. Is the journalist quoting a bad number or is the survey flawed?
That to me is totally crazy…
In a SurveyGizmo study for real estate listing site Redfin, 44 percent of San Franciscans made an offer on a home they had not viewed in person last year. The figure is likely indicative of the advent of online real estate listings, as well as the tenacity demanded of potential Bay Area home buyers. If you don’t act fast in this housing-deprived region, someone else will.
Of the 1,500 people surveyed throughout the country, all of whom purchased homes in 2017, 35 percent said they’d bid on a residence without viewing it first. That’s a 16 percent increase from the previous year.
If buyers are local why can’t they just visit the house? SF is a pretty small city to begin with.
On a second thought, I think sight unseen can become the future of the housing market. With pictures, videos, Redfin agent reviews, if we add other buyers and other agents reviews, you don’t really need to see the interior to make an offer.
In the future, the listing agent can install many cameras and many sensors so that you can have an online virtual open house to the people on foreign countries.
So you can market your house to the 6 billion people instead of hundreds of local residents
Why not just live in a virtual world like in the Matrix? Wouldn’t that be nicer (and lower cost)? You just need a cell, and some pipes.
I personally found there is no substitute to visiting the house & neighborhood physically. Photos(lighting/narrow focal length leads to lack of context of the rooms & flow) can be misleading.
I have bought a number of properties myself. If it’s local I will always go visit the house. Pictures and even video are no match for physically being there.
Even though 44% of buyers bid without looking, I bet for most of them the houses they ended up buying they did look before bidding.
Trust your realtor. Bought all Austin SFHs without visiting. Learn to trust people 
Tell your realtor exactly what you’re looking for in excruciating details.
Buying for yourself to live in is very didfernet from buying for investment.
Things you won’t know until you visit the house:
- Does the house smell?
- How does the floor plan flow?
- Does the house give you some supernatural chills?
- Are the neighbors crazy or have some big barking dogs?
- What cars do neighbors drive and do they park on their lawns?
Many many things. Photo and video are just too low bandwidth.
Everything looks good from far, but most are far from good. In fact it analyzed by price only, site unseen properties are guaranteed to disappoint
Older generation Chinese like my mom would advise people to bring their kids to visit the house. Presumably kids would be able to see things adults can’t. 
I see dead people… 
Could it be people are bidding sight unseen and only viewing the place if they get into contract in order to avoid wasting time in this market. I will admit that I have bid on properties sight unseen if there were contingencies and then arranged to view the place during the contingency period.
If I am buying property in SV from mainland China, I can’t be bother to even to look at the photo of the property.
Buy based on location and land, that is where the value is, the main reason to buy is for storage value just like gold. If don’t like house, just tear it down and rebuilt, no big deal.
You made it sound so easy…
天下本无事，庸人扰之而烦耳。
There’s nothing like visiting a house in person to see how tilted the foundation is…
But perhaps that kind of thing is included in the inspections…