ON the diving board of dashed hopes and denial paces an unhappy figure: the would-be buyer who shops for years but resists taking the plunge.

Like timid bathers, some just need time to acclimate to the chilly reality of what their money can't buy. That process can take some time. Eventually, though, after long and careful looking, they do take the leap.

But others never do. They focus on flaws and high prices as a way of rationalizing an underlying inability to commit to real estate.

"There are so many levels to this situation," said Dr. Ann S. Maloney, an Upper East Side psychiatrist who recognizes the routine guises of denial. "A lot of people will say they are afraid of losing their investment. The classic is, 'We're looking for a perfect place.' The next one is, 'We're waiting for what we can afford.' "

Such thinking, if prolonged and paired with the inability to make a decision one way or the other, can signal what's known as an obsessional personality. Obsessives, Dr. Maloney explained, adeptly bury their feelings beneath an avalanche of thoughts.

"Most really high-functioning professionals are not overtly anxious because they've sublimated it into very productive lives," she said. But for some, when it comes to real estate, she added: "They overthink it. They're managing their anxiety. An obsessional is caught up with doing the right or wrong thing, meaning they're really caught up in whether it's the perfect time to buy, whether it's the right apartment or wrong apartment."

John C. Prince, a senior vice president at Prudential Douglas Elliman, worked with one couple for three years in their search for a three-bedroom apartment priced from $1 million to $2 million. The pair agonized over ascending prices. "They would send you articles from every sort of newspaper saying the bubble was bursting," Mr. Prince said. "They spent far too long analyzing every market issue." Once, after a half-dozen visits to an apartment, the couple was banned by the seller's broker.

"The head ruled every decision and didn't give way to the heart, so they never fell in love with anything," Mr. Prince said. "It was always too much of a cold decision to make."

A fear of unsound investments, when it gums up the gears of decision-making, can obscure unmet needs.

Sometimes, Dr. Maloney said, "it's really about a need for deprivation," connected to unmet desires in early childhood. "They will perpetuate it in their lives in whatever they do - in relationships, work, purchases, possessions," she said. "It's not about having or getting what you want, it's getting to be angry about not having it. It's about punishing the parent who didn't give it to them."

While brokers aren't usually privy to their clients' psychological skeletons, they do say that people who experience sudden financial success can have a hard time spending, much like a Depression-raised grandparent who continues to hoard tin foil.

Beverly Feingold, a vice president at Halstead Property, recalled the couple she worked with for six years, after the income of the husband, a lawyer in his 50's, skyrocketed unexpectedly. Still, Ms. Feingold said, "They could never quite afford what they thought they wanted." Her wake-up call came when she showed them exactly what they asked for: a pretty, prewar classic five on the Upper East Side in their price range.

"If this apartment were two floors higher, this would be it," the lawyer assured Ms. Feingold, who, two weeks later, located exactly that in the same building.

"I took him to see it and he found something else wrong with it, and that's when I realized he was never going to buy," she said, attributing it to "the fear of losing the position they never really expected to have."

A different group of would-be buyers worries less about holding on than about closing off options. "They're stuck in ambivalence," Dr. Maloney said, "a developmental stage that's usually mastered in adolescence. If you make this choice, you cannot make the other one."

Brokers say they typically encounter this shopper in one of two guises: the perennial bachelor and "the single woman who has never married, who is afraid to commit to an apartment, because she's afraid if she somehow commits to a studio or one-bedroom then she's never going to get married," said Julie Friedman, a senior associate broker at Bellmarc Realty.

More heartbreaking for brokers, perhaps, are the 40-something bachelors with more money to spend but who are as reluctant to promise themselves to an apartment as they are to a mate.

"I have people who've come into me at 40 years old, and, oops, they forgot to get married and have kids," said Maryellyn Duane, an Upper East Side psychologist. "And their story seems to be they can't find the right mate, but that's not reality. They've done things to prevent relationships from working out or gotten anxious when someone gets close."

Lauren Cangiano, a senior vice president at Halstead, described the never-married, 40-ish lawyer she worked with for two and a half years. While living in an Upper East Side one-bedroom rental, he looked at hundreds of neighborhood apartments for a two-bedroom, prewar dwelling. "He always felt the properties were overpriced," Ms. Cangiano said. He lobbed several lowball offers that had little chance of being accepted (a common practice among would-be buyers). "He increased his price but he still had the mentality that everything is overpriced," she said.

After two years, he worked up the courage to bid over the asking price for a 96^th Street two-bedroom near Park Avenue. He lost. When last heard from, he was half-heartedly trolling the Dumbo neighborhood of Brooklyn for a condo, though he had doubled his price range to $1.2 million, "My sense is that he will always be a day late and a dollar short," Ms. Cangiano said. "If we got him into the psychiatrist's chair, he would probably work out some issues, and we could probably find him a wife."

Some would-be buyers are more haunted by what other people think. They fear being the dupe who bought at the top or the owner of an unenviable apartment.

"People either have to have the greatest place or they wind up having nothing," said Dr. Duane, the psychologist, who labeled it narcissistic thinking. "You're either a hero or a zero."

Into this paradigm falls the rent-controlled tenant who can afford better. "We have clients in rent-controlled apartments who don't have dishwashers, and the washer and dryer are in the basement with one dangling light bulb," said Ms. Friedman of Bellmarc. "They're living in a slum but no matter what we find, they can't break with that cheap rent."

Dianna L. Lake, another Bellmarc agent, recalled the 30-ish technology salesman, earning $300,000 to $400,000 a year, who sought a two-bedroom prewar for $1 million to $1.2 million, but would consider only distinguished buildings inhabited by his peers.

"He wanted to see a particular building in the worst way, a prewar prestigious building on the West Side, and finally something came up in his price range," said Ms. Lake, whose client's height outstripped his aspirations. "He was too tall for the apartment. He couldn't fit under the bathroom doorjamb. I did show him other apartments in his price range, and I think because none of his friends lived in those buildings, he couldn't commit to them even though they seemed to be perfect."

Other perpetual shoppers may be in thrall to a childhood real estate trauma. "A lot of people in therapy say their whole life got screwed up by their parents' moving,"

Dr. Duane said. "They often go back to, the move was a pivotal part in ruining their lives." As a result, she said, "There's a whole category of the population who just avoid allowing themselves to be comfortable and finding the right niche for themselves."

Some brokers say couples conflict is a deal staller.

Arlyne Blitz, a vice president with the Corcoran Group, pointed to situations where a husband wants a one-bedroom apartment, envisioning a move to the suburbs after the first child arrives, while his wife wants a two-bedroom. "She is a little frightened that she'll have children and be secluded in the suburbs," Ms. Blitz said.

"They may end up buying, but they may be at odds for a while before they really come to terms."

Or they may never agree. Ms. Friedman of Bellmarc said her clients have included "couples who are married but afraid to commit to a purchase, because I think in the deep recesses of their mind, they know they're going to split."

"If they commit," she said, "it's just one more issue to deal with in divorce court when they split up the property."

She described one set of clients that she and her brother, Lewis Friedman, a Bellmarc senior vice president, worked with for two years: "He loves prewar and high ceilings and she loves new condos filled with glass and sunlight and terraces.

When the husband comes in and says he wants to buy the apartment and is strong and passionate about buying it, I think he knows the wife hates it. Or he walks in and denounces it as the worst architecture they've ever seen in their lifetime, and they have a huge fight, and they each e-mail me separately with their own reasons. I know they are looking for a reason not to commit because they are just going to have to detangle it."

Like other brokers who choose not to cut the apron strings, Ms. Friedman said that her relationship to the couple has tilted from business to social. "There's a difference between spending your time and wasting your time," she said. But most brokers dispatch die-hard commitment-phobes back into the concrete underbrush.

"Browsing is a term for animals in the forest who are just nibbling at buds," said Will Brownell, a broker at Bellmarc and historical writer with a Ph.D. in history, who traced the word browse to brouz, an old French word for buds and shoots.

"Such creatures are a bloody nuisance, in someone's woods or someone's real estate, because they really get in the way and they really impede normal growth."

There is hope for those who recognize themselves here. Breaking the cycle "is about understanding the pattern, recognizing the familiarity," Dr. Maloney said.

"Of course, none of this is bad, as long as it doesn't keep you from getting what you want," she added.  "We're all nuts.  It's just a question of what particular way we're nuts and to what degree."