As someone who recently bought a house, yes. We lost two houses to people who were bidding cash, even though they bid at a slightly lower price (cash closes fast). One was Chinese and the other was Russian. It makes the local tech workers paying with loans try to top the foreign bidders. But by the next sale the foreign buyers are bidding even more because they are sitting on piles of cash and can afford to do so. It's a real effect that every single person in the real estate industry we interacted with commented on.

Also, you're giving yourself away as an outsider because VC-backed firms significantly underpay compared with the profitable tech giants.

They don't need to have a bigger impact. A secondary cause shifting radically could easily affect the market noticeably, especially in specific segments.

Btw, tech workers from venture backed startups generally make less than those working for the profitable tech giants, so it's a bit disingenuous to call them overpaid.

Overpaid tech workers are a tiny sliver of the population of the bay area. There were very wealthy people in SF long before Twitter moved there.

Definitely.