Our market is not your market so ymmv but here is what is happening here. A fixer went on the market and had 28 full price or higher CASH offers. It was priced super low to get everyone into a buying frenzy. It sold for about 20% above asking - to one of the cash offers. (We have friends trying to buy right now so we get all of the juicy details). Cash is king.
1. Are you working with a well connected agent? They can tell you about places before they hit the market so you can get in ahead of other buyers.
2. Could you sell your house with a 30 day or 60 day rent back clause? I suspect that sellers aren't even considering contingent offers right now. They don't really have to when there are multiple non-contingent offers.
3. Consider buying during the holidays. Those are your serious sellers. They need to move or they wouldn't list during that time of year. This would work better for you if you were renting back from your buyers. Sellers love a fast closing - less time for things to go south.
4. When you write the letter that gets included in the offer, make sure that the seller knows how much you love their house. They have an emotional attachment to their home and would like to sell to someone who feels the same (even if you are going to gut it shortly after you move in).
5. Also, time to pare down your contingencies when making your offer. Make it as few as possible.
6. If you really love a place don't lose it over a few thousand $$. When we bought the condo for our daughter to live in we bumped up our offer by $3k, which essentially got clawed back during the HOA financials inspection. (Our two contingencies were inspection and HOA financials - and the HOA is poorly funded. Based upon what we have heard from the HOA meetings I think that we are looking at a special assessment shortly). So in the end we paid less than we offered. You can't negotiate if your offer isn't accepted. The time to be economical is during subsequent negotiations, not on your initial offer. You are offering based upon what you see. You negotiate upon the factual condition once you have had an inspection completed. If everything is as advertised then the offer was fair, as it stands. If there were undisclosed issues, you can account for those in your credit negotiations.
Our friends finally got a house in escrow. They were the first ones to see it on the day that it hit the market, and and the sellers agent and the buyers agent got along well during the initial phone conversation. The sellers agent also liked our friend when he went to look at it. They submitted an offer (of course asking+) the same afternoon that they saw the house. There were two other offers. Our friends think that the agent liking them may have been the tiebreaker when choosing between offers, but who knows.
Good luck in this crazy market!