Edit: Also, the expectation was auto-escalating offers, eBay style. The owner set a date to take offers and picked the best one.
A good example of the kind of change I’m talking about is development in 100-year flood plains in Houston[0]. 30 years ago, a naive home buyer would not have had to worry about it, because flood plains were off limits. What changed? Greedy developers? Ignorant planners? More population? Perhaps all of it. But now you have to be educated to make the right call.
[0] https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/houston/...
Using Houston as an example, 50 to 100 years ago it was the norm to bring in fill dirt from other regions, flatten and grade a piece of land, and construct a gridded residential neighborhood with total disregard for natural drainage. Flooding was dealt with by artificially channelizing bayous and streams, which is why Houston's urban waterways look so unnatural. Many of these older neighborhoods along the gulf coast were unsustainable and are not being rebuilt after hurricanes.
Starting around 30 years ago, local, state and federal policymakers started to get a clue. Neighborhoods were more commonly build to accomodate the drainage patterns -- this is why developments from the 1990's, 2000's tend to have large retention ponds, (example: https://www.google.com/maps/@29.5517845,-95.4295706,3a,75y,2... )
while neighborhoods from the 1950's-60's do not.
Aside from the stress of weekly rushes to view, inspect, bid, and bid-up, the process primarily compressed the entire process into a short period of time. The biggest inefficiency was that essentially all buyers were forced to become journeyman experts at the compressed-time process.
It seems like it is healthiest for homes to be on the market for about two weeks. Part of the trouble with short-duration listings is that it is a high-stakes version of the optimal-stopping problem. I think a little more holistic visibility into the market's offerings might yield better matches between buyers and homes.
Choosing an abode for the next few decades amidst weekly auto-escalation bidding wars just doesn't seem healthy for the future dwellers.
In the last 15 years I've purchased in both Toronto and in rural Ontario with the full set of conditions; financing, inspection, etc. As a buyer I simply won't do it otherwise. We have a 6 acre hobby farm near Hamilton.
But I also just don't bother to go look at properties with language in the text like "Accepting offers on...". We won't play the multiple offers game. In Toronto maybe this is the only way to get a home, but we were able to avoid it there back in 2005 by just hunting in areas that weren't "cool."
My experience is there's always almost other places that come up, where the seller has more scruples.
We might sell our hobby farm soon. I would fully expect any potential buyer to demand inspection.
As I understand it, in competitive urban markets it has become common for sellers to do a pre-inspection and then sell / provide that info for interested parties. This potentially makes for a faster sale and may create a more competitive situation if more potential buyers see less risk in the condition of the house and are willing to make an offer. But, at least in my state, anything a seller learns about the condition of their home must be disclosed so this could also backfire.
Any time you can remove a contingency in a competitive situation it will be a potential advantage, but caveat emptor all day long - sellers seldom have a complete understanding of their home and property so it is to the buyer's best interest to do everything they can to inform themselves before completing the purchase.
I’m in the process of buying a home in Washington and my agent says she’s never had a client waive the inspection contingency unless they’re buying a cheap fixer-upper to flip.