If you are trying to avoid overpaying, I would focus less on drama and more on pace, supply, and where asking prices sit.
Trying to buy in Santa Clara, CA without donating your sanity to the process? My rule of thumb is simple move quickly, but do not confuse a fast market with permission to throw money around like confetti. Over the previous 30 days, supply stood at 1.59 months and a typical sale took 8 days, so hesitation has a cost here. Still, a typical asking price last month was $1,458,500 while the typical closed price was $1,650,000, which tells me competition was real and pricing was not always neat, tidy, or polite.
Recent offers landed about 106% of asking in Santa Clara, CA, so yes, buyers were often paying above list. The early answer is that you should be prepared for pressure, but I would not treat every asking price as sacred scripture when the market also showed a typical closed price of $1,650,000 last month and homes generally moved in just 8 days.
What matters for a buyer is speed with guardrails. A market with 1.59 months of supply does not leave much room for leisurely pondering over backsplash choices, but the month-over-month drop in the typical closed price means I would stay grounded and property-specific instead of assuming every seller holds all the cards all the time.
Get fully ready before you start touring, because 8 days is not a market that rewards last-minute scrambling. Shortlist the homes that truly fit and ignore the rest. Make clean decisions fast when a property checks the boxes. Keep your ceiling clear in advance so competition does not trick you into writing a love letter to regret.
