I recently had to deal with this. I got VERY lucky and found a house where the seller took my offer at asking price. It took me 7 months of battling with sellers to finally land this house. Every single one of my offers which was rejected were because of 2 things: 1. An investor came in with cash and offered to take the house "as is" with no inspection, 2. People were offering 20K+ over what I was offering - and I was generally going 10-15K over asking price on a lot of the houses I was interested in. I am very blessed to have the lender & realtor that I have. I've heard stories of people battling with getting under contract for over a year.