&gt; how the real estate market works.<p>I&#x27;m not saying it&#x27;s your own broker or agent that is biding up the remainder of the lots you are intending to buy.  It is &quot;observers&quot; who are manipulating the system in a way to make you reveal to them your intentions and price, so they can &quot;front run&quot; you for the next transaction a millisecond later at the next exchange.<p>And the reason I quoted observers was becuase in my limited understanding (if i had the book in front of me I would re-read this), the HFT traders would put up some token offers up on <i>all</i> the stocks for the purpose of exposing potential activity that they could abuse.   A quick google of this suggests that this is called &quot;Pinging&quot;.