its a matter of three things: location....location...location.
one home on my block in SF recently sold for 15% above asking price after 2 weeks on the market. another is in the midst of a bidding war right now.
i lol when i read articles about "SF Bay Area" real estate woes. The problem is that the writers fail to look at the City of SF vs the rest of the Bay Area. Moreover, within the City, specific 'hoods are doing much better then others. e.g. people working for various SV companies (goog, appl, former dna, etc) have cash from RSUs (restricted stock units - the new "stock option" ) and often pay 50% cash or more when they buy, and if they want a certain property, they are willing to pay up and outbid others.
yeah, we do have foreclosures in SF (city), but they are clumped into just a few 'hoods, and there are no foreclosures at all in my zip code (although had one or two this summer).
its all relative.