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Yep, house on my street was listed for $950k a few weeks ago and sold for almost $1.4m. In my area (Kitchener/Waterloo), every house is selling for $250k-$500k above asking.

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Houses are listed artificially below market to expand interest and create bidding wars. No one expected to sell for $950k and if that was the only offer they got it would have been rejected. I had this experience on a property in Toronto where they listed at $1.5 million didn’t get a bidding war, rejected our offer, relisted at $1.71 million and eventually sold.

Above asking is a meaningless number because asking isn’t a reflection of what anyone expects a house to go for. It’s a game price designed to attract as many of the right people as possible to the property.

There was a time in the not too distant past where asking was exactly what a house was expected to go for. When I bought my current home in the early 2000s, most homes went for under asking price by a small bit.

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