How often does this go wrong, and why?
Where home sales actually fall apart
Roughly one in six sales that go under contract do not close. The reasons are boring, repetitive, and mostly about dates.
September 21, 2026 · about a 2 minute read · Keighbor Research
About one contract in six does not make it to closing. That number surprises people and it should not: an accepted offer is a set of conditions, and conditions fail.
The useful thing about the failures is how few kinds there are. Almost all of them are one of five, and four of the five give warning.
One: the loan
The most common by a distance. A buyer who was pre-approved is not the same as a buyer who is approved, and the gap between the two is . Buyers change jobs, take out a car loan, move a deposit in from a relative without a paper trail, or turn out to have a debt the pre-approval did not see.
The warning sign is a lender who stops answering quickly. The is the only thing that ends this risk, and it usually arrives in the last week.
Two: the inspection negotiation
Not the inspection. The negotiation after it. A report comes back, a request arrives, and the two sides are far enough apart that neither will move. This one is rarely a surprise, because it plays out over several days in writing.
Three: the
A number comes in below the contract price and the financing no longer covers the deal as written. What happens next is whatever the contract says, and the choices are usually a second look, a price change, more cash from the buyer, or the contract ending.
Four:
Rarer, and the one most likely to be fixable with time. An old nobody knew about, a boundary that does not match the fence, an heir who never signed, a name spelled two ways. Most of these get cleared. The ones that end a sale usually end it because the clock ran out, not because the problem was unsolvable.
Four of the five give you weeks of warning. Almost nobody is watching for it.
Five: the buyer changes their mind
Inside a window, a buyer who has decided they do not want the house will usually find a reason inside one of the conditions. This is the one that gives no warning at all.
What happens to the deposit
Where the goes depends on which condition failed and what the contract said about it, and it is genuinely contract-specific. Your state's page lists the release paperwork it commonly takes. A buyer who walks inside an inspection window is in a different position from one who walks after every contingency has been released. Neither side gets the deposit released until both sign something, which is why a mutual release exists.
And then what
A sale that falls through is not a sale that has to start over. The disclosures are written. The photographs are taken. The description exists. What you lost is weeks, and sometimes the you now know the contents of.
Sellers who relist quickly are usually the ones who still have everything from the first round in one place: the disclosure, the photographs, and what a sale actually costs them worked out once. Sellers who have to rebuild it from an inbox take a fortnight to get back on the market, which is most of why people lose track even with an agent.
An underlined word opens what it means, here, without losing your place. Every word a sale uses is a page of its own.
Your own sale, in one place.
Everything above happens to one house on one set of dates. A Room keeps that house's steps, papers, people and numbers together, and tells you what needs you today.
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