IT IS/WAS A MARKET FAILURE. Economic Rent Extraction and Information Asymmetry in Canadian Housing Market

Economic Rent Extraction
Canadian tax payers are making this country a great place to live, while foreign investors are extracting economic rent from Canada's high living standards, both in the form of collecting real rent from Canadian residents (tax payers) and gaining from the sales and taking money out of the country after flipping/selling the properties back to Canadian residents (tax payers) at a much higher price!

Information Asymmetry
The "blind" biding for house purchase is where there is information asymmetry between sellers and buyers and is a free market failure.  It requires government intervention.   If there is bidding, it should be open auction.  When there are three offers on a house listed for $800K;  and the offers are $800K, $850K and $1100K, it is a clear indication of free market failure and exploitation of blind bidding by the real estate agents.