The wife and I just sold our townhouse (side by side style). Our place went on the market 1 day after the neighbor's did (lady living next to us). Our place has 3 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms and a loft area (equates to almost 400 extra livable square footage) whereas the neighbor's place has 2 bedrooms, 1.5 bathroom. Our place went for right around the top end a couple other townhomes by us sold for.....but the place next door that had zero things done to it (still had original flooring, cabinets, light fixtures that was installed 17 years prior), someone actually paid $40K more for the neighbor's place over what ours went for. What the hell? That's just fricking crazy!
Also, the whole process of trying to find a new place - if you're not lining up a viewing the day of a place goes on the market and then if you're not putting a bid in that same day, you're pretty much guaranteed no chance at the house being on the market the next day. We'd walk through 4 or 5 places a day and ones that clearly are not worth what the asking price is, they're still flying off the market. I've walked through places that were asking $425K and they looked like shit - water damage, bug infestation, a deck that's rotting, piss poor patch job on walls, damaged flooring....and the houses fucking sell! They sell for the asking price or more.
It got to a point where we were putting in offers on places that we didn't really like, but didn't really hate either. Just because houses were being sold in as little as 48 hours.
The wife and I got lucky, we found a great place (older home, was built around 1970), but the current owners had added on two big bedrooms and a full bath upstairs, added a nice 300sqft sunroom, all the walls were professionally painted and the list goes on. The current owners, they are in their late 50s, but the husband is a contractor so he has taken good care of the place and made sure things are handled professionally.
People seem to be out buying just to be buying. I was at my local Target store a few days ago (was this past Monday, actually) and the entire shelf of toilet paper was empty. People aren't hoarding TP again (not to my knowledge), but it feels like people are buying just to be buying because it is there. At the same time though, one of the store workers said the delivery truck never showed up that day and it had been several days since it was supposed to come in. Sounds like trucking material around is becoming a bigger and bigger problem.