As someone who has built many real estate sites, this is done on purpose as a "fuzzy-logic" search as agents feel anyone willing to spend $750k for a home can be easily induced to spend 5-10% more if the right property catches their fancy.
If I have wiggle room, I make my max inclusive of the "x% more if it catches my fancy". It's unintuitive to search for "max $680k" to ensure results are within a $750k budget. As someone who uses real estate sites, this is enough friction to send me elsewhere, where, as tamana says, my preferences and ability are respected. Why not add a slider bar for "perfect place" wiggle room amount/percentage, with a 10% default, but which the user can set to zero?
Exactly, and the next problem is that it seems like EVERY real estate site does this. I have not found a SINGLE site in Australia to look for rent OR buy real estate, that actually filters based on what I enter. They are all useless