As others have pointed out, there is more to an offer than the exact dollar amount. The highest bid does not win, the best offer wins. You need to find an agent or realtor who knows how to write an offer, if yours does not.
A couple guys I know who rehab/flip houses just bought one in one of the hottest neighborhoods in town, (Larchmont Village), they were not the highest offer. One of the guys is a RE agent and he wrote the offer, here is what you conceivably could be up against:
The house is a tear-down and they paid ~$1M for it. Their offer was not only 100% cash but they released $100k of escrow $$ to seller immediately, a non-refundable deposit if ANYTHING goes wrong and they do not buy it. "Take this $100k, you keep it". Then the offer continues; NO appraisal, NO inspections of any kind and 14 day escrow.
They are tearing the place down so who cares about inspections. I realize that this might seem like an extreme example but the market is impossibly hot in some places right now with tons of pros and institutional investors buying houses. My buddies snagged a property that probably 300 different buyers would have bought for cash that week, they just got there first and knew how to secure it.
It's horrible for people getting bank loans that just need a place to live right now in CA. I've been looking for small investment properties to rehab and it's nearly impossible. I have financial backing and can pay cash immediately, write any contract we feel like writing and it's still tough because of lack of inventory and competition.
Lastly, there is a lot of seriously uninformed advice around here about RE agents, IMO. Yes, many are not worth 2 schits and it's a super-easy profession to enter. But for that reason, they are not all equal and it matters who you use. Using the wrong one to list your house could cost dearly and selling yourself with no real knowledge of the market would be seriously stupid.
I know another guy, (not the ones mentioned above), who is a pro builder/flipper in the upper price range, where the real $$ is made or lost. He's been doing it for a long time and he snags amazing properties in L.A. on a regular basis. The profits are in the millions when he gets the right house and builds what he wants with it. He has been very generously mentoring me about his business and not only do they use RE agents on every transaction, they use different ones for different deals and always try to use the right one for each situation. He told me that ALL good deals come from RE agents, they are the ones who know what's coming online for sale and that establishing good relationships with many of them is THE KEY to his business. Also, he has told me that when selling, there is no *one best RE agent* to list the house with, you need to use the agent that specializes in that neighborhood and is the current hot-shot with all the buyers in their pocket. Using the wrong one is an amateur mistake.
I realize that this is all related to RE pros but some of it applies to anyone trying to buy or sell a house right now. At least in L.A., some poor newb with a bank loan application in their pocket out shopping for a good deal on a nice house is like the person trying to buy an early 911S for a fair price who wants to correspond by email for a week and arrange a PPI. They get their clocks cleaned so fast that they don't know WTF just happened(?)
