> how the real estate market works.

I'm not saying it's your own broker or agent that is biding up the remainder of the lots you are intending to buy. It is "observers" who are manipulating the system in a way to make you reveal to them your intentions and price, so they can "front run" you for the next transaction a millisecond later at the next exchange.

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 all the stocks for the purpose of exposing potential activity that they could abuse. A quick google of this suggests that this is called "Pinging".