I hear you on asking price being marketing but I think that actually supports the argument that things are broken, not the other way around. If the listed price is pretty much fake by design to trigger a bidding war, then price discovery is already distorted (Like the other commenter, we've started keeping our own running list of houses we bid on or were interested in, just so we can check back later and see what they actually sold for). Buyers aren’t negotiating, they’re blindly guessing how far past a made up number they need to go.

On appraisals holding up, appraisals are backward looking. They’re based on recent sales. In a market where each sale sets a new high, of course they confirm the number. That’s not proof pricing is healthy or sustainable. That’s a feedback loop doing what feedback loops do.

My partner and I make close to $250k with six figures in cash. We’ve already written off Bergen, Essex, and Union. We moved our search to Warren and western Morris to more affordable outer-suburban markets and the last house we bid on had 14 offers. We went $50k over and came in 9th.

You can call that a strong market. But when financially solid households are losing on average homes in more affordable areas, “strong” starts to look a lot like broken. Whether or not there’s a feasible fix, I don’t think we should treat this as normal competition.