“There were a couple I came in with my best offer,” Yang said. “One, I met them at the price they were asking, and I can still got outbid. Especially the neighborhoods I was looking at, they’re on the fringe. I was shocked that the competition was so fierce.”

The picked-up pace is leading to sweaty palms for buyers, and agents say it takes a few lost opportunities for consumers to understand the local real estate market isn’t in the same poor condition it was two to three years ago.

By nature, Blondin said he was the type of shopper who put all the pros and cons on a spreadsheet. He found that cautiousness difficult to get past, but he did. “That’s the easiest way to lose a house in this market,” he said.

So instead of mulling potential bids overnight, McCord and Blondin found themselves making offers on properties they’d only driven past, and at one point had offers out on five homes at the same time.

“The myth is that it’s a buyer’s market right now,” said Bridget Rose, of Chicago, who just extended an apartment lease after losing out on what she fears may have been the dream house for herself, her husband, Sean, and their infant son.

On a recent Wednesday morning, the couple saw an hours-old listing for a home in Chicago’s Edgebrook neighborhood.

They left their respective workplaces at noon to go see it. By the time they arrived, there was an offer on the house.

After walking through the home, they went outside, leaned on the hood of their car and wrote an aggressive offer, which was by then the third offer on the house. “I said, ‘I’m going to throw up if we get this and throw up if we don’t,’ ” Rose recalled. “The drama of it is crazy.”

They lost the house to someone who not only offered the asking price but also removed the contingency that they couldn’t complete the purchase until they sold their current home first.

“If it’s finished, if it’s updated, it’s gone in an instant,” said Pete Mangione of Prudential Rubloff, the Roses’ agent.