A lot of our friends have recently moved and we know some real estate agents that confirm their experiences. There are large companies buying houses as investment properties for rentals. They will beat any price on a house just to get it. None of the people we know went with their offer though because it's shitty for the rest of the street and because they of course will have the most strict demands for repairs.

My wife thinks we're moving backwards because we aren't moving like everyone else, but I don't really want to buy a house in this market. I have a LOT of equity in my house ($300k ish), but I'd rather wait till a crash.

The real estate agents have been saying it's standard for houses to go 18-20% over list price, and that's all the way up well into the millions of dollars for the property. Generally that market is much slower, but that doesn't seem to be the case nor. Anyway, the problem is that if you're gong to end up paying 40k over asking, then you can't get a deal by buying a house that needs work because all your extra money to do the work just went out the window. It's a problem.