They don’t have to buy to fuck up the market. They just have to bid. If there’s low inventory, people that actually need to buy a home are forced to beat/match the bidding.

They can also target just specific areas of specific major metros and there are ripples throughout the entire market.

The housing “market” does work the same as the stock or commodity markets. People aren’t buying an intangible share. They’re buying this specific and unique house and if they’re told “we just got a cash offer for $50k over ask”, they may be tempted to beat it. That doesn’t happen when people buy AAPL. The shares are fungible.

There’s only empirical evidence of their buying activity. We’ll never know how many deals they bid the price up on but didn’t buy. This auction like quality is evident in any market like this; watch Storage Wars and one disinterested buyer will bid up the price just to fuck with his competing bidders.

Respectfully, I think this is just made up. "They just have to bid" to manipulate prices in the real estate market: I don't think you can show that's a thing. Please by all means make the attempt.

As I said, there’s no data on this. Unaccepted offers don’t get tracked anywhere and don’t show up in anyone’s financial records. However, have you ever participated in a “multiple offer, best and final” type RE market? There’s plenty of opportunities for what I explained in market conditions we saw in recent past in many parts of US.

So you're saying there's no evidence to support your claim. That's what I just said.

I said it in the comment you replied to asking for evidence

Fair enough!

> They just have to bid.

You can't "just bid". A bid is a contract. If you back out, you'll lose your earnest money.

No, making an offer is a bid. It’s cost nothing to make an offer. Multiple offer situations were the norm for a few years in much of the US. Many listing agents will post on the listing “multiple offers, best and final due by X date”. Nobody knows if that’s true or has spent any money yet by making those offers (earnest is put down only once an offer is accepted). This is US I don’t know if you’re from elsewhere or just misinformed but you’re wrong.

There’s a lot going on between making an offer and losing earnest money.

I’m selling a house right now that’s in bad shape so getting lowball offers. They don’t even submit an offer, they text me or call me and tell me what price they would offer. They don’t want to do the paperwork for something I’m just going to ignore. Yet, if it turns into 2 or more people floating numbers I like I will tell them to write it up then I will tell them there’s another offer and try to get them to go higher. All that is before I accept there offer and earnest money is put down after that. So the bidding war is over by that time.

Even if earnest money did work how you describe, it would tie up a few thousand dollars per property for a few days max then be returned and redeployed on another property. These companies have deep enough pockets to fund that. There earnest money only ever enters the picture of their offer is accepted.