The more you lose, the harder you bid next time
Marnix Hazelhoff
7 February 2026
Reading time 3 minutes
Anundsen, A.K., Benedictow, A., Eriksen, A.E. et al. (2025). Repeat Bidder Behavior in Housing Auctions. Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics.
Many buyers make multiple attempts before successfully purchasing a home. The question this study asks is straightforward: does someone change their behaviour after participating in a bidding process more than once? And if so, in what way? Researchers at Oslo Metropolitan University analysed more than one million bids from nearly 200,000 housing transactions to find out.
The research
Although the data are Norwegian, the sales process in both countries follows the same basic structure: an ascending-bid auction with legally binding bids and short deadlines. The data come from the bidding logs of DNB Eiendom, one of Norway's largest real estate agencies, covering the period 2007–2021. By using unique bidder identifiers, the researchers were able to follow the same person across multiple auctions. They distinguish between two types of behaviour: targets (what kind of home is someone looking for?) and tools (how do they bid?). They statistically test whether repeat bidders behave differently on both dimensions as they participate in more auctions, controlling for market conditions, seasonality and individual bidder characteristics.
The key findings
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Targets remain stable. Repeat bidders search for a home of roughly the same size and value in their second and third auction as in their first attempt.
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Bidding behaviour does change. With each subsequent auction, repeat bidders place higher bids in nominal terms, higher relative to the asking price, and higher relative to competing bids in the same auction.
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The effect grows with the number of auctions lost. Bidders who lost two auctions bid on average 3% more in their next attempt than in their first. Those who lost five or more auctions bid on average 7% more.
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By the fifth auction, bids were on average 3.1% higher above the asking price than in the first participation.
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The researchers attribute this pattern to two possible mechanisms: learning how auction processes work, or an increased willingness to pay driven by accumulated frustration. The data do not allow a distinction between the two explanations.
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The Dutch context
The Dutch housing market displays characteristics that make a similar mechanism plausible here as well. According to the NVM Quarterly Report Q4 2025, the average home attracts 2.8 bidders and 72% of homes sell above the asking price (for terraced houses this figure rises to 80%). In a market this tight, the likelihood is high that a substantial share of active buyers at any given viewing have already lost out before. Whether the balance between learning and frustration in the Netherlands mirrors that in Norway is unknown, as comparable Dutch research at the level of individual bidding logs does not yet exist.
Conclusion
Targets prove robust: repeat bidders consistently search for the same type of home, with the same size and value as in their first attempt. What changes is strategy. Those who lose more often bid harder, both in absolute terms and relative to the asking price and competing bids. The study cannot rule out that this is partly rational learning: bidders gaining a better understanding of how auction dynamics work and adjusting their tactics accordingly. But the pattern is equally consistent with a behavioural explanation, in which the experience of losing drives up willingness to pay independently of any change in the home's actual value. Both mechanisms lead to the same outcome: higher bids with each successive attempt.
