"I've never heard of anyone even paying asking price, let alone above it..." For what it's worth, paying above asking is a pretty bizarre concept to me as well

"I've never heard of anyone even paying asking price, let alone above it..." For what it's worth, paying above asking is a pretty bizarre concept to me as well, and I lived most of my life in LA (LA LA, not an outlying area) before moving up to SF. Having owned and sold a home in LA, I would have been smoking crack to believe I'd get my asking price, let alone exceed the asking. And there was no shortage of crazy money floating around that town. But here in SF, asking is basically the floor, not the ceiling. This is probably because of supply & demand. SF has much more constrained inventory and less liquidity in that inventory -- so you get things like bidding wars, and multiple offers on listings are the rule and not the exception. I have seen people get carried away with their pricing here, and the market usually punishes those people until they lower their asking prices. But for condos or houses priced "appropriately" relative to their comps, asking is almost assured, and above-asking is far from uncommon.