08/26/2026
A San Francisco buyer can offer $150,000 over asking and still have only about a 1 in 7 chance of winning.
That sounds absurd until you understand what the asking price is actually doing.
Picture this. A home is listed at $1.5 million. You stretch and write $1.65 million. That is $150,000 over asking. It feels aggressive. Maybe even reckless.
Then Monday comes.
Twelve offers.
The house sells for $1.8 million.
You did not just lose. You lost by another $150,000 while thinking you had already made an extremely strong offer.
This is where many San Francisco buyers get trapped.
The list price often is not the market value. It is part of the marketing strategy. Price low, attract a crowd, create competition, then let buyers push each other higher.
So how much should you actually offer?
“Offer strong” is not an answer.
In our new video, we take a different approach. Instead of pretending there is one perfect number, we show the trade-off between how much you bid and your estimated chance of winning.
For one simple example:
$1.65M → about 1 in 7 chance
$1.72M → about 4 in 10
$1.78M → about 6 in 10
$1.80M → about 8 in 10
As the odds improve, something else disappears. Your margin.
That relationship can actually be drawn as a curve. Once you see it, bidding wars start looking very different.
The goal is not to win every house.
The goal is to know what you are trading away to improve your odds, then choose the point that makes sense for you.
And sometimes the smartest point on the curve is no offer at all.
If you are buying in San Francisco, this is one I would watch before writing your next offer.
🎥 Watch the full video:
https://youtu.be/oZDb3VjJc-M
Big Data Realty. We run the numbers. You make the call.
