This unseasonal uptick in competition in the Bay Area may be a sign of things to come elsewhere, according to Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather. “Right now, there are fewer homes for sale than we usually see this time of year, and sales are picking up thanks in part to low mortgage interest rates. All of the pieces are in place for bidding wars to become more common and for the housing market to shift back toward the seller’s favor next year,” said Fairweather. “Now may be the last chance in the foreseeable future for buyers to win a home without facing a bidding war.”
Austin, Seattle, Atlanta all have bidding war rate significantly lower than Bay Area. I thought those are the new tech job meccas? 
You keep using this Redfin bidding war data. It’s already been pointed out why it’s garbage. If you’re going to base your life on data from a company with low single-digit market share, then go right ahead.
Even at single digit market share as long as the volume of data is significant enough it should still follow the trend. There is no good reason why redfin buyer/seller scenarios are any different from clients at other firms.
That said, I don’t see bidding war at all. At least not in San Jose.
Yup. We can take that as a poll. Any poll is not going to involve everyone. As long as the sample is representative of the population at large I don’t see why we can at least tease out some market trends. Redfin may actually skew mid to lower market. I don’t see them selling many up market houses.
Hardly has bidding wars in Austin. At best one more bidder. Are they referring to Austin address or include suburbs?
With AAPL gaining 67% ytd and hitting new ATHs almost weekly, plenty of money to buy houses.
Speaking of SF a relative was recently in the market. Have not seen any houses without a bidding war. Usual disclaimer about anecdotes applies.
Yeah, just ignore the only way they know there was a bidding war is if their buyer loses the bid. If they win, they don’t know.
Of course you’d know even if you won the bid eventually. Any good agent will use the first round of bids to ask for more in follow up bidding. Any buyer who submit contracts know if there is bidding involved.
You have no way of knowing except the selling agent’s word. If you think that’s reliable and want to base statistics on it, go ahead.
In Cupertino area the bidding wars started again. This is first hand information. You will soon see 100k above listing closings. Not sure what the reason is but open houses are crazy packed in the last few weeks. Go check for yourselves. What could be the reason? Apple stock or rich people fleeing Hong Kong?
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Yes, that’s how I know 
Typical to have 4 - 5 bidders, then 2 kept on pushing it and one win. In Los Altos & Palo Alto area. Low inventory doesn’t help, but good news is price is not increasing much, but as well as not going down.
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Ideal state would be for prices to remain flat for a couple of years while the last few years of gains are consolidated
I just wanted to be in the fortress for good and bad times
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The bad news is fortress area moves over time. One can argue SF is the new fortress. 
Yes, one can argue, but I think it is slipping away a bit. My social circle is moving into Oakland (younger couple work in SF and still wants things to do in the evening), or moving to Peninsula (young couple wanted to raise kids but still work in SF and wanted option to work in South Bay). A few people I know are moving from failing unicorn (Uber / Lyft) to stable company that pay well like FB, Google, LinkedIn, Apple. SF is definitely still high concentration of startup, but problem with that is, before IPO, startup pay is not great, so they need successful IPO to keep these young adventurers buying in SF. On top of that, coming to SOMA from western part of SF takes almost the same as coming from cities like San Mateo.
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did you move to a fortress?
Everybody is getting into the home value game. Latest entrant is Nextdoor. It also shows how strong the market around your house is. Here’s what it says about mine in SJ:
BTW I also noticed Redfin now shows rent estimate on their listings. Haven’t got the chance to cross compare with Zillow.
Buy in South Bay to wait for those to have kids to come to papa.
I am really curious about what changed in 2 months to Cupertino market. Can this be due to Hong Kong? Does anyone know?
Also apparently the Safeway complex at Stevens Creek and Lawrence is sold for about $100M. That’s close to $500 per sq foot. Does that mean a single family home with 6000 sq ft lot will be valued at $3M?