I want to start making offers on places I like but my assessment of reality and what the sellers want is still so so far apart that I guess I will just have to wait at least 12 months more.

What I do basically is take the 1998 price (or the first sale price if newer than 98), apply a GENEROUS 8% YOY appreciation. I then round up the figure to the nearest 10k. I consider this much MORE than fair because houses historically don’t have 8% long term appreciation in SoCal and some of these houses have monster HOA dues for which I should deduct from the sale price further but I am being VERY GENEROUS and not doing that.

Even so, I usually arrive at 30-50% of the list price which just shows you how amazingly out of wack this market really is. We will be back to earth, just have to excercise more patience that’s all.