Marisa Kashino spent years covering local real estate as an editor at Washingtonian and the Washington Post. Now she’s using that knowledge for her debut novel, Best Offer Wins, a satirical thriller about a DC publicist driven to extremes by the horrors of house hunting. It’s already been optioned by Hulu for a TV series. We asked her to tell us how real life inspired the book.
A Nutso Market
In 2021, Kashino bought a house in Cabin John amid a frenzied real-estate boom. Her own search was relatively painless, but the general atmosphere at the time got her thinking. “It struck me as surprising that nobody ever set a thriller within the context of a really competitive house hunt,” she says. During that overheated time, Kashino heard tales of listings that got 60 offers, sold for hundreds of thousands over asking, and attracted around-the-block open-house lines. Those kinds of anecdotes informed the novel’s wild plot.
A Local Focus
The setting is crucial to the book, the author says. “When you think of cutthroat interactions [in Washington], maybe you think of wheeling and dealing in Congress. But that stuff happens in the neighborhoods here, too.” As a reporter covering all of it, Kashino felt like the competition was particularly intense around DC, given the ruthlessly ambitious Beltway types her characters represent.
An Insensitivity Send-Up
The main character, Margo, and her husband want to leave their Shaw apartment for a property in Bethesda for reasons that Kashino describes as “a composite of a lot of the reasons people move to Bethesda—great public schools, nice backyards, clean streets.” Margo’s desperation to move is fueled by attitudes common among residents of gentrified areas. “She’s cavalier talking about some things in a transitioning neighborhood, like seeing unhoused people and hearing gunshots,” Kashino says. “She doesn’t pause to reflect on who was on the losing end of that gentrification.”
A City She Loves
Best Offer Wins is full of affectionate references to some of Kashino’s favorite spots around the District, including Jane Jane, Causa, and the Royal. “Even though Margo wants to get out of DC and find her dream life in the suburbs,” she says, “I did intend for the book to read in part like a love letter to the city.”
This article appears in the November 2025 issue of Washingtonian.
