Straw buyers exist, not denying it. Straw buyers who are entirely price insensitive may exist, but are so rare as to be unicorns. If you are actually “launder

Straw buyers exist, not denying it. Straw buyers who are entirely price insensitive may exist, but are so rare as to be unicorns. If you are actually “laundering” money, ie from a crime other than fleeing oppression, the cost of laundering matters. Buying a $1M condo for $2M costs you a 50% of your ill gotten gains, and there is still risk of seizure. At those costs there are far cheaper routes for laundering your money. So what’s occasionally happening is that Chinese trying to escape the control of the PRC dictatorship send money to a trusted expatriate, sometimes a student, and tell them to pay up to $X for a property at market prices. Naturally this can lead to paying slightly over market because the proxy isn’t motivated to negotiate, or often equipped to. If I price my home at $1M when it’s worth $950k, they’ll pay the $1M. But they aren’t offering me $1.4M. And it’s questionable what the specific market price really is at any moment. My friend recently bought a home for $605k that was listed at $599k. He got an early preview the day before it’s initial open house. That night He made a full cash offer at $6k over ask that expired the moment the open house started. The buyer accepted 15 minutes before expiration. Did he overpay? The buyers received over a half dozen backup offers during the open house, some as high as $30k over ask.