Bidding wars for homes? All cash offers? Investment groups flipping properties? All that and more. It's 2006 again in Los Angeles, only months after the Great Recession finally seems to have actually turned a corner.

If you're a first-time buyer with only a loan and a minimal down payment in-hand, good luck. But real estate broker Redfin says things cooled off in May. A little:

The company says “shopping for a home was slightly easier for homebuyers in May than in April” because only about 70 percent of bids nationwide faced competition while 73.3 percent did so in April.

L.A., however, not so much:

In our fair town, competition for that dream casa only let up ever so slightly, with 86.1 percent of listings seeing competitive bids in May versus 86.2 percent in April, according to Redfin.

That means 8 out of 10 listings are seeing buyer vs. buyer, and then some.

That helped made Los Angeles the second most competitive market in the nation last month. It was beat out only by San Francisco, with Orange County coming in third and San Diego following, Redfin says:

Credit: Redfin

Credit: Redfin

California markets are still the most competitive, with Redfin's San Francisco, Los Angeles and Orange County homebuyers facing competition on more than eight out of every 10 offers in May. But even Cali is cooling a bit, with San Diego and Orange County posting the largest month-over-month declines in competition, seeing 16.4 and 10.3 percent drops in the percentages of Redfin offers facing bidding wars from April to May. Competition in Los Angeles hardly changed, with just a 0.1 percent drop in the rate of offers met by other bidders from April to May.

And if you took Southern California as a whole, it would beat everything in sight.

So you like renting? Good, because you might not have a choice at this point.

Send feedback and tips to the author. Follow Dennis Romero on Twitter at @dennisjromero. Follow LA Weekly News on Twitter at @laweeklynews.

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