One in seven home purchase agreements came apart in July. Nationwide, 14% of the homes that went under contract fell out of contract, the highest share Redfin has recorded since November 2023.

If you had a deal die this summer, you already know the list of reasons. The inspection. The appraisal. The payment that looked different the second time the buyer ran it with the lender. The seller who wouldn’t give one more credit. Every one of those is real. But underneath most of them sits a question that never makes it onto a termination form: was the decision ever finished?

When buyers feel like they’re in the driver’s seat, they will walk away from a $350 inspection fee and even a $1,000 earnest money deposit to get the house they actually wanted. That isn’t a financing problem. It’s an unfinished decision meeting a market that keeps offering alternatives.

Why contracts come apart when buyers have options

From 2020 through 2022, scarcity did a lot of the committing for you. A buyer who lost the house might not find another one, so buyers held on through almost anything. Redfin’s data shows deals fell through at a lower rate during that hot seller’s market than they do now.

That pressure is gone. In July, Redfin counted a near-record 51% more sellers than buyers in the U.S. market, and the number of buyers fell to a record low. More listings mean more alternatives, and more alternatives make a buyer willing to walk when the inspection uncovers something, the appraisal comes in low, or the seller won’t agree to concessions.

Negotiation moved with the leverage. In the three months ending in May, sellers gave concessions in 46.2% of the sales reported by Redfin’s buyers’ agents, the highest May share in records going back to 2019. And 15.7% of those sales carried both a price cut and a concession. Buyers aren’t only negotiating harder. They’re negotiating on more fronts, and every front is another moment when somebody reconsiders.

Then there’s the phone. The listing alerts don’t know your buyer is under contract. A buyer who writes an offer Friday night can wake up Saturday to three new listings and a price reduction on the house they passed over. The decision you helped them make keeps getting compared to the decisions they could still make.

The pattern underneath the 14%

The most useful evidence isn’t the national number. It’s the spread underneath it. Redfin broke July’s cancellations out by metro, and the pattern tracks buyer leverage almost market for market.

Houston is the sharpest example. Its cancellation rate jumped from 14.4% in June to 19.6% in July, in a market where Redfin counts 130% more sellers than buyers. At the other end, Nassau County, New York, lost 3.5% of its deals. Buyers there have few homes to choose from, so they hold on to the one they have.

Be precise about what this shows. Redfin counts cancellations. It doesn’t record why any single buyer walked away. What the data shows is where deals die most often, and that is where buyers have the most choices.

Be precise about the national number, too. Fourteen percent isn’t a spike. Redfin describes cancellations as moving in a narrow band between roughly 13% and 14% for four years. That is the more important fact. One deal in seven coming apart isn’t an unusual month anymore. It’s the market you work in.

If you’ve seen a much lower figure from NAR, that’s a different measurement, not a contradiction. NAR’s August 2026 REALTORS® Confidence Index put terminated contracts at 7%, but it surveys REALTORS® about their own most recent contract over the prior three months rather than counting MLS pending sales. Different method, different population. Neither number is wrong, and they don’t belong in the same sentence as if they measured one thing.

An accepted offer was never the finish line

The industry treats “under contract” as the end of the decision. The rider goes on the sign, the congratulations go out, and attention moves to the next client. What’s left feels like logistics: inspection, appraisal, title, closing.

In a scarce market, that mostly worked, because the market reinforced the decision for you. Losing the house felt worse than keeping it. In a market full of choices, nothing outside the transaction holds the decision in place. The only thing holding it is how well your buyer, and your seller, understood why they made it.

An accepted offer doesn’t end the decision. It starts the part where the decision gets tested.

This runs on both sides of the table. Some sellers are still anchored to the neighbor who got six offers in 2021. Some buyers are discovering that leverage is available and asking for all of it at once: the price reduction, the closing costs, the repair credit, the rate buydown. Negotiating favorable terms is good representation. But there is always another person across the transaction, and there is a point where a seller can say no. Not because they’re being difficult, but because after the price cut, the closing-cost contribution and the inspection credits, selling no longer accomplishes what they set out to do.

That isn’t a seller objection. It’s a decision. And when the buyer who wanted the house loses it over the fourth request, negotiation and commitment have collided.

Commitment is a stretch, not a moment

This is where the Decision Gap Loop™ explains what the cancellation numbers can’t. Every buyer and seller moves through Awareness, Desire, Hesitation and Rationalization. Then the Loop forks. If Rationalization answered the questions keeping them from moving forward, they move into Commitment. If it didn’t, they move into Re-Engagement, and the right move is continued information, market context and conversation until something changes, not pressure for a signature.

Re-Engagement isn’t failure. It’s the normal path for most of the people you talk to. SAA plans around a benchmark of roughly 60 conversations for every closing, and many of the other 59 aren’t a no. They’re a not yet. When a consultation ends without a signed agreement, you usually weren’t outcompeted, either. In NAR’s 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, 67% of first-time buyers and 76% of repeat buyers interviewed only one agent. The hesitation isn’t about which agent. It’s about the decision.

Commitment begins when the decision to move forward is made. For a seller, that’s usually the listing agreement: we’re selling. For a buyer, it’s the buyer representation agreement: we’re buying. It doesn’t end when the listing goes live, when the buyer finds the house, when the offer is accepted, or when the inspection period closes. Commitment ends at closing.

That stretch lasts weeks, sometimes months, and every week is a chance for a new question to reopen the gap. That doesn’t mean the Loop broke. It’s the Loop doing exactly what it describes. Your job is to identify which kind of question just arrived. Does the client simply need an answer? Has something materially changed? Or have they moved out of Commitment and back to a place where Re-Engagement is the honest next step?

What a reopened gap looks like from inside the deal

Picture a seller who listed planning to net $100,000. The house sits. They reduce the price. An offer finally arrives with a closing-cost request. The inspection turns up several items, and the buyer asks for another credit. Somewhere in the middle of that repair addendum, the seller stops asking should I accept this request? and starts asking does selling this house still do what I needed it to do?

That’s the gap reopening. If you learned during Desire why they were selling, what they needed to walk away with, and what life was supposed to look like after the move, you have somewhere to return to. Not to talk them into anything. To help them decide.

Now picture the buyer. They signed a buyer agreement, toured, found the house, and negotiated $15,000 off the price plus a closing-cost contribution. Offer accepted. Then Saturday morning a new listing appears: newer kitchen, bigger yard, $10,000 less. And the buyer starts wondering whether they chose the right house.

Some contracts should end. Inspections uncover real problems. Appraisals change the math. Financing changes, sometimes over something as ordinary as a new truck. New information can change a sound decision, and helping a client walk away from the wrong house is representation too. But some contracts come apart because the decision was never finished, and a better-looking listing simply found the crack.

Three ways to carry a decision to the closing table

Find the seller’s walk-away number before you list. Not the list price. The net below which selling stops making sense for them. Talk through price adjustments, concessions and inspection negotiations before they happen, while nobody is emotional. A seller net sheet makes the number concrete. When the fourth request arrives, you’re checking it against a number your seller already chose, not negotiating with their disappointment.

Write down the buyer’s reasons before they write an offer. Two or three sentences, in their words: why this move, why this area, what has to be true about the house. When the Saturday listing shows up or the inspection report lands, read it back with them. You’re not selling the house again. You’re reconnecting them with the reasons they chose it.

When a new question appears, diagnose before you advise. Ask what changed. If it’s a question, answer it. If something material changed, the decision deserves a real second look. If they’ve drifted back into hesitation, say so plainly and slow down. That is a different conversation from holding a deal together at any cost, and your clients can feel the difference.

Know why they said yes

The cancellation rate isn’t asking you for better ways to rescue deals. It’s asking you to treat Commitment as the stretch it is: sellers who understand their market before they list, buyers who know what they want before they write, and both sides clear on the financial boundaries of their decision. The decision will get tested between the signature and the closing table. When it does, the most valuable thing you can bring is knowing why your client made it.

Sources: Redfin, contract cancellations report, August 21, 2026 (U.S. pending sales, July 2026, seasonally adjusted MLS data; sellers-to-buyers ratio for July 2026). Redfin, seller concessions report, June 22, 2026 (U.S. home sales reported by Redfin buyers’ agents, three months ending May 31, 2026, seasonally adjusted). National Association of REALTORS®, REALTORS® Confidence Index, August 2026 survey, released September 10, 2026 (U.S. REALTORS®, most recent contract in the prior three months). National Association of REALTORS®, 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers (U.S. recent home buyers). The 60-conversations-per-closing figure is a Solo Agent Academy planning benchmark, not industry data.