The Deal Killer Report: Why 1 in 5 Home Sales Fall Apart, and How a Pre-Inspection Keeps Yours Alive

0:00Welcome to Real Stories with Buddy Blake. Today's episode features real estate insights from Buddy Blake. Let's dive in. So, Buddy, I got to start with this line from your report because it stopped me cold. Getting an offer isn't the finish line. Getting to the closing table is. And right now, about one in five contracts on resale homes in our area falls apart before it closes. One in five?

0:32Yeah, it's a gut punch when you say it out loud, right? I've been selling homes here since 1998, and I've watched a lot of deals die. And almost every time, it's the same handful of reasons. Most of them could have been spotted weeks before the house even hit the market. So I built something to show it plainly, with real local numbers instead of just my opinion. We call it the deal killer report.

0:59Okay, break that down for me. What exactly does this report track? So it tracks every resale home in our five-county area that went under contract and then lost that contract. Didn't matter if the deal lasted three days or three months. Buyer and seller agreed and then it fell apart. It counts. Then we follow that home. Did it sell later?

1:19For how much? How long did it take? Is it still just sitting there? Did it never sell at all? And then we compare all of that to homes that sold clean on the first contract. And I noticed you leave out new construction and land on purpose. Right. Builder deals fall apart for totally different reasons. I wanted this to be an honest picture of what happens when a regular homeowner sells their home.

1:42So how often does this actually get updated? Because real estate moves fast. It pulls straight from our MLS data and it rebuilds itself every six hours. So it's always current. It's not some stale number from a report somebody ran months ago. Okay, so give me the actual fall-through rate. Out of every resale contract written in the last 12 months, 2,818 out of 15,208 died. That's about 18.5%.

2:16And what does that actually cost somebody in terms of time? Like days on market? This is where it gets real. Homes that sold on their first contract, median of 28 days. Homes that lost a contract and sold later, median of 88 days. That's about 60 extra days of carrying that house.

2:3660 days. And I imagine that's not just annoying. It costs money. Oh, it costs money two different ways. First, there's what I call the price scar. Homes that sold clean brought about 97.3% of their original asking price. Homes that had a deal die brought about 94%. That 3.3 point gap, that's the scar. Because buyers see a home come back on the market and they start wondering what's wrong with it.

3:06Even if nothing's actually wrong. Even if nothing's wrong, that's the frustrating part. And then there's the carrying cost. We take the typical home price around here, about $380,000, and add up the mortgage interest, property taxes, insurance, HOA dues, upkeep, utilities, comes out to roughly $93 a day. 60 extra days is about $5,600. Add the price scar of about $12,500, and a dead deal costs a typical seller here roughly $18,100.

3:40$18,000. That's not a small number. No, it's not. And here's the other thing the report shows. About 36% of sellers end up cutting their price after a deal dies, usually by around 6%. And of the homes that lost a contract and have since either sold or come off the market, more than one in five never sold at all.

4:03Wow. Okay, so let's talk about what's actually killing these deals. You mentioned older homes and crawl spaces. What did the numbers show? This part surprised even me, honestly. Homes under 10 years old lose about 14% of their contracts. Homes 50 years or older lose about 25%. That's roughly one in four. And homes on a crawl space lose about 22.5% of their contracts, compared to about 16% for homes on a slab.

4:35So it's really about what's hiding in the house that nobody's looked at yet. Exactly. The stuff that kills deals usually lives in places nobody checks until the buyer's inspector crawls under the house or gets up in the attic. Moisture, wood rot, termite damage, an aging roof, old wiring, a tired HVAC. And by the time the seller finds out, the buyer's scared, the clock's ticking, and the seller is negotiating from the weakest spot they'll be in the wholesale.

5:04Okay, so this is where the pre-inspection comes in, right? Why does that matter more now than it used to? A few years ago, buyers were waiving inspections just to get a house, overlooking almost anything. That market's gone. Today, buyers have more choices, more time, and a lot less patience for surprises. If something comes up in their inspection, a lot of them would rather just walk and go look at the next house than fight through repairs.

5:34So a pre-inspection flips who finds the problem first. That's exactly it. Instead of the buyer finding the problem three weeks into the contract, you find it before you ever list. Then you decide what to do about it on your own schedule. Fix it with your own contractor at your own price. Price for it honestly, so a buyer can't use it to renegotiate later. Or disclose it up front, so it's already part of the deal instead of a surprise that blows the whole thing up.

6:05I love that framing. You control the timeline instead of the buyer's inspector controlling it. That's the real win. You avoid the extra carrying costs, you avoid that price scar, and honestly, maybe the biggest thing, it takes a lot of the anxiety out of selling. Sellers tell me the waiting is the worst part, wondering every single day if the deal's going to hold. When the surprises are already off the table, you can actually sleep at night.

6:33So you believe in this enough that you're actually doing something about it now, right? Yeah, I believe in it so much that when you list your home with me, I'm including a full pre-listing home inspection and a termite and pest inspection, and I pay for both of those up front. I use an inspector I've known and trusted for years. His reports are thorough, easy to read, he knows the homes in our area, and he'll actually sit down with you and walk through the report so you understand what matters and what doesn't.

7:02That last part feels important. Not every item on an inspection is a deal breaker. Not even close. That's why having someone explain the difference calmly makes all the difference. My promise is simple. It'll be thorough, it'll be fair, and we'll be transparent about what it finds. Then we make a plan together, fix it, price for it, or disclose it, so the deal we write has the best shot of making it all the way to the closing table.

7:30And for folks listening who want to actually see these numbers for their own neighborhood? The deal killer report breaks it all down by county, by town, by zip code, even by the age of the home and the foundation type. We've got it linked in the show notes for you. Every area's a little different, and the market moves, so it's worth pulling up and seeing what dead deals are costing sellers right where you live.

7:54This has been such a good one, buddy. Any last thing you want sellers to walk away with? Notice this if you're thinking about selling in the next year. Let's talk before you list. I'll show you the numbers for your neighborhood, get your inspections on the calendar, and help you sell with a lot less stress. Call or text me. 910-395-1000.

8:17910-395-1000. And the full article and the deal killer report are linked in the show notes so you can look up your own area. Buddy, thanks so much for walking through all this. Thanks for having me. Thanks for listening to Real Stories with Buddy Blake. For the full article and more, check the show notes.