Spending months to find the perfect home in your price range, only to have your mortgage application rejected, or a home inspection turn up expensive repairs, is a nightmare — one that is coming true with increasing frequency, according to a new report from real estate listings website Trulia.
A Trulia analysis of U.S. listings shows that 3.9 percent of homes that moved from for-sale to pending moved back to for-sale again, nearly doubled the rate in 2015. Such “failed sales” increased in 96 of the 100 biggest U.S. metros, with big swings in areas large and small, rich and poor. That includes Los Angeles and Charleston, S.C., as well as San Jose, Calif. and Akron, Ohio.
In Ventura County, Calif., where the median home value is $548,000, 11.6 percent of prospective sales failed to close in 2016. That’s the highest in the U.S., up from 3.1 percent in 2015. Tucson, where the median home price is $176,000, had the second-highest rate of failed sales, at 10.8 percent, up from 3.5 percent the year before.
The problem of failed sales has been most acute for cheaper homes and older ones: Some 6.3 percent of sales of starter homes fell through last year, according to Trulia’s analysis, compared with 3.6 percent of so-called premium home sales. Homes built in the 1960s had the highest fail rates, while sales of newer and older houses were more likely to go through.