You’ve Lost the Bidding War On Your Dream Home

If you are trying to buy a house right now, you’re in the middle of a real-life Hunger Games. You finally find that perfect little house that you can’t live without, and there will be 13 other people who feel the same way.

That means you’ll be sucked into the worst possible outcome in any house-hunting scenario—a bidding war. Those other house hunters, like you, will do whatever is required and use all the weapons at their disposal to land the place. And when you lose, which you most likely will, you will watch your dreams—of backyard cookouts, of being able to get out of bed on both sides, of room to turn around in the bathroom without bumping your butt on the sink, of a kitchen in which your pots and pans don’t all have to live in the oven—evaporate. You will be gutted. You will grieve mightily, just like when [your childhood pet’s name here] got hit by a car.

The good news is that you will get over it, eventually. But first, you’ll have to go through the five stages of grief that accompany the loss of any bidding war. The stages start right after you stop swearing. Here’s what each stage looks like, plus some suggested coping mechanisms to get through them:

Stage One: Denial

You didn’t really want that stupid house. It’s a stupid house. Forget that house.

You should: Keep saying this to yourself until this stage wears off. It’s the best you’re going to feel for awhile.

Stage Two: Anger

That house wasn’t stupid! It was awesome and you lost it. Why do you keep on LOSING?? Why can’t you ever WIN anything? It’s just like the high school state basketball championship that you LOST. And all those times you lost the lottery. Oh great! Now there’s a hole in the wall above the TV from you throwing your laptop in loser rage. Loo. Zer.

You should: Stop with the throwing. You’re going to be in your house awhile. But don’t repair the hole. That’s just conceding that you are never moving out. Go buy a painting to cover it up. It will take your mind off all the losing.

Stage Three: Bargaining

You are brilliant! Why didn’t you think of this before? You tell your broker to offer 5% above the winning offer, no matter what it was. Your broker tells you it was all cash, 30% over asking, included a new Range Rover, the buyers are closing on the property in eight hours, and their moving truck is already idling outside the house. “Face it,” your broker says. “You lost.” “NO!” you think really loudly to yourself. “You lost, broker person. YOU lost.”

You should: Drink and cry. But whatever you do, don’t watch HGTV. All those clueless, insanely picky, delusional, yet somehow winning house hunters will make you throw things at the TV, which you can’t replace because you need your savings for a downpayment. Theoretically.

Stage Four: Depression

You will never find a house. Just quit looking. It’s pointless. Why even bother? You’re going to be stuck in this dumb, ugly house for the rest of your life, looking at that terrible painting you just bought to put over the hole. You hate that painting. What is that even a painting of? An angry bee stinging a… a walrus of some sort? Is it even hung the right way up? It looks like a five-year-old drew it. It’s a stupid painting.

You should: Stop drinking and go to bed. Leave the picture alone. It’s hung properly. You maybe should have paid for a nicer one, or bought some fine art photography of the Eiffel Tower or a foggy Brooklyn Bridge. Deal with that tomorrow. If you have dreams about blowing up that house that someone else won, that’s a normal part of the grieving process.

Stage Five: Acceptance

Wait. That’s not a bee and walrus. It’s a flower in a garden. Now that the morning sunlight is hitting it, it’s not that bad of a painting. The colours go with the comfy chair. Like you planned it that way. You sort of like it now. You’re gonna sit in that comfy chair and admire your new painting, have a cup of coffee and take a quick scroll through the listings sites to see if anything came on the market overnight. You’ll use your phone, since your laptop is in pieces.

You should: Love the one you’re with. Maybe go ahead and fill in that hole. Keep the faith. Your house is out there. It might take you a year to find it. You might need to look at 100 houses or more. Maybe you’ll have to wait until this insane market crush has calmed down a bit. But you’ll find it. In the meantime, remember to be thankful that you’ve got a roof over your head, be that as it may.

Manhattan’s office-vacancy rate climbed to more than 15% this year, a record high. About 80 miles away in Philadelphia, occupancy also is at historically low levels. But a 24-storey office tower located between the two cities has more than doubled its occupancy over the past five years.

Developer American Equity Partners bought the New Jersey office tower, known as 1 Tower Center, for $38 million in 2019. At the time, the 40-year-old building felt dated. It had no gym, tenant lounge or car-charging stations. The low price enabled the firm to spend more than $20 million overhauling and luring tenants to the 435,000-square-foot property.

Now, the suburban building is nearly fully leased at competitive rents, mopping up tenants from other buildings after the owner added a new lobby, movie theatre, golf simulator, fitness centre and a tenant lounge featuring arcade games and ping-pong tables.

“Our tenants told us what they needed in order to fill up their offices,” said David Elkouby , a co-founder of American Equity, which owns about 4 million square feet of New Jersey office space.

The new owner also liked the location at the 14-acre hotel and conference-centre complex, off the New Jersey Turnpike’s Exit 9 in East Brunswick. The site is a relatively short commute for millions of workers in central New Jersey and is passed by 160,000 vehicles daily.

The property’s turnaround shows how office buildings can thrive even during dismal times for most of the U.S. office market, where vacancies remain much higher than pre pandemic.

Success often requires an ideal location—one that shortens the commute time of employees used to working at home—and the sort of upgrades and amenities companies say are necessary to lure employees back to the workspace.

One Vanderbilt, a deluxe office tower with a Michelin-star chef’s restaurant and plenty of outdoor space in Midtown Manhattan, is fully leased while charging some of the highest rents in the country.

The 11-story Entrada office building, in Culver City, Calif., is making the same formula work on the other coast. It opened two years ago with a sky deck, concierge services and recessed balconies. A restaurant is in the works. The owner said this month that it has signed three of the largest leases in the Los Angeles area this year.

1 Tower Center shows how the strategy can be effective even in less glamorous suburban locations. The tower is prospering while neighbouring buildings that are harder to reach with outdated facilities and poor food options struggle to fill desks even at reduced rents.

The recent interest-rate cut and reports that some big companies such as Amazon .com are re-instituting a five-day office workweek have raised hopes that the office market might be getting closer to turning.

But with more than 900 million square feet of vacant space nationwide and remote work still weighing on office demand, more creditors are seizing properties that are in default on debt payments.

Rates are still much higher than they were when tens of billions of dollars of office loans were made, and much of that debt is now maturing. The recent interest-rate cut doesn’t mean “office-sector woes are now over,” said Ermengarde Jabir, director of economic research for Moody’s commercial real-estate division.

Lenders are dumping distressed properties at steep discounts to what the buildings were worth before the pandemic. Some buyers are trying to compete simply by cutting their rents.

“Most owners don’t have the wherewithal to do what is required,” said Jamie Drummond, the Newmark senior managing director who is 1 Tower Center’s leasing agent. “Owners positioned to highly amenitise their buildings are the ones who are successful.”

HCLTech, a global technology company, illustrates the appeal. It greatly expanded its presence in New Jersey by moving this year to a 40,000-square-foot space designed for its East Coast headquarters at 1 Tower Center.

The India-based company said it was drawn to the building’s amenities and design. That made possible a variety of workspaces for employees, from quiet nooks to an artificial-intelligence lab. “You can’t just open an office and expect [employees] to be there,” said Meenakshi Benjwal , HCLTech’s head of Americas marketing.

HCLTech also liked the location near the homes of its employees and clients in the pharmaceutical, financial-services and other businesses.

Finally, it didn’t hurt that the building is a short drive from nearby MetLife Stadium. The company has a 75-person suite on the 50 yard line where it entertains clients at concerts and National Football League games.

“All of our clients love to fly from distant locations to experience the suite and stadium,” Benjwal said.