Also, even if you can bid, cash is king. So, not only is everyone driving the prices up, but the winners are usually all cash. I don't know anyone who has a few million in the bank, ready to move on property. Sadly..
>About 60 percent of foreign buyers paid cash, compared with one-third of domestic buyers, according to the 2014 Association of Realtors survey.
http://www.sfgate.com/business/networth/article/How-and-why-...
1/5 (all buyers) = 3/5 (foreign buyers)
So one in three buyers is foreign. Which means two in three buyers are domestic, which means two in nine buyers is a domestic buyer who pays cash. So that puts the number of cash-only domestic buyers higher than foreign investors. That means that it's roughly the same absolute number of domestic cash-only and foreign cash-only (allowing some fuzziness in the numbers), not quite mostly foreign cash-only.
We can safely then conclude that the article linked does not support the claim that the people bidding cash are mostly foreign.
When you're in an auction market, which has a segment of bidders that are more accustomed to bidding over with cash, you're going to see them push auctions into the cash over range more frequently, even if they aren't the ones ultimately buying.