Veronica Dagher

Also, financing for buyers may be falling through because they lost their jobs and they no longer qualify for a mortgage, or the house ends up being a lot more expensive than they realized.

For example, if they are factoring in home insurance that maybe they didn't factor in initially, or property taxes, they may realize that this monthly payment is going to be way more than they can handle.

Another thing is a lot of these deals are falling out of bed during the home inspection stage.

And folks are finding there's a repair I need to make.

That's not super unusual.

But the difference now is that doing those repairs are a lot more expensive.

So you may realize I don't have another $20,000 to put towards a pipe repair when I'm already so stretched on this mortgage going in.

What are the consequences of a failed deal for both the buyer and the seller?

Depending on the contract and when the buyer backs out of that contract, they could lose a good faith deposit, typically 1% to 3% of the home's purchase price.

If you back out in time or under certain conditions, you can get that money back.

You're also going to lose the money spent towards home inspections and appraisals.

And that could be in the thousands of dollars.

Sellers, on the other hand, having that deal fall through doesn't look good in general because your house is going to ultimately be on the market longer.

Other buyers will see that and say, there's something maybe wrong with this house.

This just shows the uncertainty about what's happening in the market.

And that is combining with people's general uncertainty about this overall economy.

And that's giving people a lot of pause.