A three-bedroom condo in a midcentury-modern building in San Francisco, a 1951 bungalow in Los Angeles and an apartment near the beach in Carlsbad.

Getty Images

The closing table is the place for buyers, sellers, real estate agents, and title company representatives to come together—in harmony—to complete a real estate transaction. Most of the time, closing day goes off without a hitch. Sometimes, though, things don’t quite go as planned.

But just how messy can it get?

We recently spotted a lively discussion taking place on the r/RealEstate subreddit after one user posed the following question: “I’ve heard of deals falling apart at the closing table but I’m wondering what would cause it. Does anyone have a story how this has happened?”

Users weighed in with cautionary tales of buyers’ and sellers’ best intentions going up in flames on the day they were supposed to close on a property. The common thread among this sad sampling of scenarios: a total and utter lack of common sense. It turns out, some people just can’t get out of their own way. Here are some of the most memorable collapses.

Photo-Illustration by Realtor.com; Photos: Getty Images (3)

It’s that time of year again. Homebuyers begin poring over listings with Instagrammable kitchens and shoring up their finances. Sellers slap on fresh coats of paint and make all of the repairs they had been meaning to do since they moved into their properties. And a real estate agent somewhere pops a tray of cookie dough into the oven before opening the doors to the open house.

Welcome to the spring housing market, 2023—and buckle up for one unlike any you’ve encountered before. After a high-stakes, boom-and-bust cycle that played out over the past year, buyers and sellers alike are now waiting to see if America’s real estate market awakens from its deep slumber and starts galloping again into the prime selling season.

Will sellers plant those familiar “For Sale” signs in their yards again in large numbers, and will buyers snatch up their properties despite a crushing lack of affordability? The answers could reverberate through the market for years to come.

The market had been on life support the past few months as high prices and rising mortgage interest rates had sidelined many would-be buyers. Sellers had little incentive to list when multiple-offer bidding wars gave way to necessary decreases in asking prices—especially when the next home they bought would have a higher mortgage rate. New listings dropped and the number of home sales cratered.

Three years after New York legalized micro-mobility bikes and scooters, lawmakers and building managers are grappling with how to make them safer, after numerous fires, some fatal.

Far from a temporary, pandemic-era adaptation, multi-generational households are more popular than ever. Find out what NAR’s recent study reflects and how you can be sensitive to the needs all of your buyers.

Bedrooms that promise great comfort and sanctuary can generate a visceral response. Well-designed bedrooms can inspire a heartfelt reaction that buyers won’t be able to ignore.

Check out these great March events!

March 3rd – 12th: Denver Restaurant Week

“Celebrate the local culinary scene during VISIT DENVER’s Denver Restaurant Week, March 3-12. Top restaurants will offer multi-course dinners for one of three tasty prices: $25, $35 or $45 per person. Dine-in, to-go and delivery options will be available to accommodate all diners.” More Info!

GlobalStock/iStock

“I must break you,” Ivan Drago told Rocky Balboa in “Rocky IV.”  (Spoiler: He didn’t.) It’s the exact sentiment you may feel while staring at your dream home, thinking about its sellers, and pondering what to do when negotiation talks go cold.

Now you might not be able to break hard-headed sellers, but you can probably warm them up enough to at least bend a bit. We asked accomplished experts what home buyers can do when a real estate Cold War sets in.

1. Knock out the home warranty

When you need to sweeten the pot, it’s a smart idea to start focusing on some of the little things in the contract. The home warranty is a good place to begin.

“In our market, it is almost standard now for a seller to pay for a home warranty for the new buyer,” says Jeff Knox, broker and owner of Knox and Associates Real Estate in Dallas. These home warranty clauses generally cost a seller around $500.

Eva-Katalin

If you’re selling your home, you’re probably going to consider investing some money in a sprucing-up that the pros call home staging. Staging can be a cost-effective way to get a quick sale. If you don’t fancy yourself a design-minded individual, fear not; there are professional home stagers for that. But what is a home stager and how can they help you?

A home stager is responsible for preparing a home for sale. The goal of staging a home is to make it more appealing while still allowing the potential buyers to envision putting their own personal touch on the property. Home stagers will bring in furniture, art, and accessories to ensure the decor is on-trend and aspirational.

The pricier the home, the more it costs to stage. As a general rule of thumb, most stagers charge $300 to $600 for an initial design consultation, and $500 to $600 per month per room.

Why stage a house?

Everyone is entitled to live in an apartment free of noxious odors, but compelling a landlord to take action comes with risks.

Market Activity Is Increasing, But Not as Much as Last Year

The warmer weather has definitely made it feel like spring is in the air. We’re still a few weeks away from official Spring, but real estate agents always have to think in advance to keep their businesses running smoothly, especially in a slow economy. The good news is that activity does seem to be on the rise. More contracts are coming our way this month than last; when they were down about 9% city-wide from the year before, and things feel quite a bit more like a normal market for this time of year. However, although activity is picking up as part of normal seasonality, things are still much slower than the frenetic pace at the start of 2022.

If you look at the Monthly Market Snapshot below, you can see that for-sale (active listings) housing inventory at the end of January was 83% higher than it was at the end of January last year. This is partially because buyer demand is lower due to recession fears, and listings are staying on the market for about twice as long as they were before. Despite this, average home prices were still up 2.5% from the year prior, which is a good sign that they are remaining steady rather than declining quickly as many feared they would.

It's the highest price yet for the former Ramsey home, which hasn't sold in nearly 20 years despite several attempts in the $2 million range.

Realtor.com

The priciest listing in Minnesota is a waterfront home with 360-degree views of Lake Minnetonka.

The 9,016-square-foot mansion sits at the end of a peninsula in Woodland, MN, and is listed for $14.75 million.

“It’s a stunning piece of property with almost 1,700 feet of lakeshore, which is very unique,” says listing agent Jim Schwarz, with Lakes Sotheby’s International Realty. “The views in the home are absolutely spectacular from every room. You feel like you’re on a cruise ship at times. The water is very close to the home, which is not typical.”

Spacecrafters

Realtor.com

Nothing says “home, sweet home” like a Craftsman bungalow.

Made popular in the early 20th century as part of the Arts and Crafts movement, they were designed to be simply and inexpensively built for the working class.

Furniture designer Gustav Stickley was a leading proponent of Craftsman homes, which bucked the rising trend of industrial mass manufacturing by incorporating handcrafted elements and simple, folksy design.

Craftsman homes were built so well that many of these bungalows still remain, with original features like gabled roofs, stone fireplaces, built-in furniture, porches, wainscoting, and moldings. Better still, you can find some in major metro areas for reasonable prices.

Companies said that instead of laying off workers, they're trimming their payrolls through attrition or by offering voluntary buyouts.

HGTV

You might know Tarek El Moussa from “Flip or Flop” and Heather Rae El Moussa from “Selling Sunset,” but now that they’re hitched, of course, it was inevitable that they’d have their own show together, “The Flipping El Moussas.”

Yet, while one might presume their combined expertise and experience might instantly gush real estate gold, their show’s premiere suggests they’ve got some growing pains to get through first.

In the first episode, rightly called “Our First Flip,” we find Tarek and Heather Rae (then pregnant with their first child) about to embark on their initial renovation together.

It’s a four-bedroom, three-bath midcentury modern house in Silver Lake, an increasingly hip suburb of Los Angeles. Tarek’s company, Tarek Sells Houses, has paid an eye-watering $2.15 million for the home. They’re hoping to fix it up and sell it for around $3,100,000, netting about a $400,000 profit.

Getty Images

Today’s housing market has been in some deep doldrums by many standards, but the latest real estate statistics suggest something more serious might be ahead—that the market might be careening toward some sort of rock bottom.

“Taken as a whole, this week’s data lines up with other indicators that are pointing to a potential bottom in housing market activity at a fairly low level,” notes Realtor.com® Chief Economist Danielle Hale in her most recent analysis.

The only upside we can think of is that there’s typically nowhere to go from there but up. So, does that mean the worst days of real estate will soon be over? Not quite, since the big four harbingers of housing—home prices, inventory, days on the market, and mortgage rates—show few signs of a rebound yet.

“They don’t yet offer a strong indication of how long the market will bounce along the bottom,” Hale explains.

The two-day Christie's International Real Estate conference in the Cayman Islands drew broker-owners — including Aaron Kirman in his debut at the event — from four continents and around two dozen U.S. states.

If you want to keep your pipeline full, you can't slack off on marketing. Take this quiz to find out if you're doing everything you can (and should) be doing now.

Catch up on the most-read stories of the week, as determined by Inman readers. Here's Inman Top 5 for Feb. 24 - March 2, 2023.