Dear Urban Diplomat: Are bidding wars on rental condos socially acceptable?
Dear Urban Diplomat,
I went to a viewing of a rental condo recently—a great place with an office, a fireplace, a gym downstairs and cheap rent ($1,200). It seemed perfect until the seller said he’d be accepting blind bids. I know bidding wars are common in home sales, but this was a rental! I felt cheated, and said so before storming out. I’m sure I was right, but my friends think I’m a nutbar. Can you settle it?
—Bidding Warrior, Dupont and Spadina
In this overheated market, blind bids on rentals have become a bona fide trendlet. Did you overreact? Probably. You could have submitted a bid for $1,200 on principle and walked away. The good news is that you avoided a bidding war, and since experts predict an impending buyer’s (or renter’s) market, your indignation was well timed. I suggest you stay calm, keep looking and possibly head to the nearest bookstore to fetch a copy of Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff.
Send your questions to the Urban Diplomat at urbandiplomat@torontolife.com
![](http://www.facebook.com/sharer.php?u=https://torontolife.com/city/urban-diplomat-bidding-warrior/&title=Dear Urban Diplomat: Are bidding wars on rental condos socially acceptable?&picture=https://torontolife.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/02/feb13-urban-diplomat-rent.jpg&description=[caption id="attachment_188764" align="alignleft" width="292"] (Image: Brian Hawkins)[/caption]
Dear Urban Diplomat,
I went to a viewing of a rental condo recently—a great place with an office, a fireplace, a gym downstairs and cheap rent ($1,200). It seemed perfect until the seller said he’d be accepting blind bids. I know bidding wars are common in home sales, but this was a rental! I felt cheated, and said so before storming out. I’m sure I was right, but my friends think I’m a nutbar. Can you settle it?
—Bidding Warrior, Dupont and Spadina
In this overheated market, blind bids on rentals have become a bona fide trendlet. Did you overreact? Probably. You could have submitted a bid for $1,200 on principle and walked away. The good news is that you avoided a bidding war, and since experts predict an impending buyer’s (or renter’s) market, your indignation was well timed. I suggest you stay calm, keep looking and possibly head to the nearest bookstore to fetch a copy of Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff.
Send your questions to the Urban Diplomat at urbandiplomat@torontolife.com){kind=link}
You are within your rights to not want to engage in a bidding war. But calling this cheating is just being pretentious.
If you the potential tenant called $1,200 “cheap rent”, then put in the bid at $1,200 or whatever you consider to be fair. You might have gotten it, but by walking out, you missed out.
Its like bidding on anything that you actually want. Would you have put in a bid for $4 million for a used car? Maybe not, but if the used car was the TV Batmobile, what would be you bid?
This is a silly question. If it’s socially acceptable to offer a lower amount (say, $1,100) instead of the $1,200 being asked (which happens all the time, I was in real estate for a year and saw many cases of lowball offers on properties for lease), then why would it not be acceptable to offer MORE if you really want it?
If the landlord receives multiple offers for $1,200… how are they supposed to decide which of them to take?
Money talks, and for that reason, an extra $50 or $100 per month might make my rental offer stand out in the right way.
Not very good advice from the Urban Diplomat. The magazine is called ‘Toronto Life’ and we are far from a buyers market on the rental side in Toronto. It’s actually a SOLID landlords market! But thank you for the belly-laugh printing this question about it being socially acceptable.