Posted by MikeT23 on 7/9/2010 12:21:00 PM:
Compare it to looking at house, making an offer that's accepted and then losing it because someone made a better offer while you were on your way to sign the papers. Maybe it was your dream house and now you're heartbroken. Maybe you passed on the next best thing. Or maybe you go "Meh. There are thousands of houses on the market."
That kind of happened to me with my dream apartment about a decade ago. A couple were renovating a huge old house and had the whole top floor as a separate unit. I looked at it and would have signed a lease on the spot, but the husband (who was doing the reno's) was the one showing the place and was deferring to his wife (who wasn't there) on the financial decisions. I called her twice and left messages, and three hours later when I finally got hold of her she'd rented it to someone else.
The worst part was that I kept their number, and a year later called them again just to see if the place was available. Turned out the woman they'd rented it to had flaked out on her lease five months earlier, and they'd re-rented it then.
The moral is to give it to the person who seems to really want it, and not the flaky person.