What are the most common reasons for why homes do not close?

From financing issues to disagreements over the final sale price, there are many possible reasons for why a house did not close, so we decided to take a closer look via newly released information from NAR.

First, a bit of a disclaimer – the results, which are collected in a graph below, are part of a new set of questions from NAR’s Realtor Confidence Index, and NAR only began collecting the data in February. Additionally, our graph only includes the specific reasons Realtors gave for why a home did not close; the most prominent reason was simply “Other,” and we opted to exclude that from the graph.

So with that in mind, here are a few interesting trends to spot in the graph:

•Financing remains difficult for potential homebuyers; among the options below, financing explanations alone accounted for 40 percent of closing failures.

•Bidding competitions, meanwhile, have fallen dramatically since February, and are down 43 percent.

•Both inspection/appraisal issues are down slightly.

•Finally, though price disagreements fell steadily through April, there was a spike in May, though they’ve fallen since.