Two things are worth separating: Irvine's genuinely deep demand, and what "over asking" actually tells you. On the demand: some submarkets have sustained pull that keeps them among the strongest in their region even when the broader market cools. Irvine is a classic example, with demand tied to the university, a strong safety reputation, and the family-and-friend networks that make people want to buy in that specific place rather than just nearby. When buyers are set on one area for reasons that don't fade with the cycle, that area holds up better than average. Homes trading over ask there wouldn't surprise us at all. On "over asking": the list price is a marketing number. Agents frequently price a home deliberately below expected value to generate traffic and competing offers, so a sale double-digit percentages over ask can partly reflect an intentionally low list, and only partly a hot market. We've listed homes well under expected value on purpose and watched them close far above ask precisely because of that strategy. So judge a market like this on the fundamentals driving demand, and judge individual sales by where comparable homes are actually closing rather than by the spread over an artificially low list. In a genuinely strong submarket, expect competition and price your offer to the real comps, not to the list price the seller chose as bait.