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And did anybody ever pull that awful linoleum up off the kitchen floor?

That's right, you loved the apartment. You wanted to buy that apartment. But somebody else beat you to it. And who could be crankier than a spurned lover who was all set to sign a big fat check?

"Mentally, we had moved in, we had decorated, we were already throwing parties," said Isabel Davis, who fell in love with an apartment at 65th Street and Central Park West and then watched the deal fall apart. "We were devastated."

Buying a home is an obstacle course strung with emotional tripwires, especially when New York City prices are involved. So if a buyer is ready to commit to an apartment but is ultimately rebuffed, it can be difficult to quickly put the old flame firmly in the past. Months or even years later, some rejected buyers shyly acknowledge that their curiosity still sometimes gets the best of them.

"I equate this to thinking you're going to marry someone, and then the wedding doesn't happen," Brian Lewis, a broker at Halstead Property, said. "You might meet someone else, and they're probably a better fit anyway, but on those lonelier, colder nights, you Google your ex."

Michael Pitt, an assistant director of a New York television show, still keeps a casual eye on an apartment that circumstance — or more precisely, his wife — denied him about 10 years ago.

"I still walk by it, and I still tell my daughter that she almost lived there," Mr. Pitt said of a white brick building about a block from his current address on the Upper East Side.

"My daughter is sick of it," he added.

Ms. Davis and her husband, Bob, had their hearts broken twice before finally closing on a co-op last year. After the first apartment, at 50 Central Park West, slipped through their fingers, they got back out there only to find themselves in a bidding war, which they promptly lost.

"It was higher than I wanted to go, but I still go online and look at the pictures," Ms. Davis said.

But Mr. Davis was persistent. A writer and a professor, he is also a real estate enthusiast who spends about half an hour each day looking at apartments online just for fun, he said. So with the help of Mr. Lewis, their broker, the Davises finally found a place with the space and the views they wanted, and they bought it.

"I'm happy," Mr. Davis said. "But until she dies, she'll think about 50."

For some buyers, it is the inability to duplicate what they almost had that makes them crazy. For others, it is something more visceral that gets under their skin: rejection.

"You can smell it and you can taste it, but it's just not yours," said Steven Sladkus, a real estate lawyer who has encountered this sentiment not only in friends and clients, but also in himself.

Several years ago, Mr. Sladkus recounted, he put in a bid on a renovated apartment on the Upper East Side, but after some back and forth, he and the owner could not bridge a $25,000 gap.

"I was trying to be Mr. Tough Guy," Mr. Sladkus said. "I'm a lawyer; I'm a tough New Yorker. And I thought the seller was being a total pig."

Finally, he said, he gave up; but he did not exactly move on.

"I checked the listing for a while after to see if it sold, and it ended up languishing for a little while," Mr. Sladkus said happily. "It gives you a perverse sense of pleasure seeing it sit on the market. Let them go scratch; they could've had a fantastic buyer!"

The apartment eventually sold for a sum between what the buyer had asked and what Mr. Sladkus had offered, he said.

Regret and longing for deals that go poof can create heartburn not only for eager buyers, but also for their brokers. Sandy Bragar, a broker at Douglas Elliman, has been working for a year with a client who passed on an apartment she loved months ago because a contractor told her the floors were crooked. Even now, with another deal finally getting close, the specter of that first apartment still haunts the client.

"She just couldn't get it out of her head, and it became a comparison for everything else," Ms. Bragar said. "What happened in the end — and I hope it's the end, seriously — she upped her price and is getting less space."

Most buyers say the home they eventually end up with is probably the best fit for them anyhow. Both Mr. Sladkus and Ms. Davis described the result of their search as "bashert," a Yiddish word for meant to be or destiny. But not everyone is so philosophical.

Eleonora Srugo, a real estate agent at Douglas Elliman, said that two years ago, she had clients who lost out on an apartment in Midtown because of problems with their bank. Instead, they bought one just like it, in the same line of the same building, a few floors lower. Evidently, this was not close enough.

"They heard through the doorman that the person who bought it never actually moved in, so they were able to structure a deal," Ms. Srugo said. They are currently in contract to sell the apartment they have and buy the one upstairs.

"I'm happy we were able to make it happen," Ms. Srugo said. "But they're still going to take a loss."