Half of SCV Listings Are Falling Out. Here Is the Seller Fix.

More real estate, more news, all the time. Here is what is actually happening in the Santa Clarita Valley housing market, June 25, 2026, Connor MacIvor, SellersOnlyAgent.com. I covered this in the video above, and here is the written version with the seller moves spelled out, because the headline this week is not the price. It is how many deals are quietly falling apart, and almost none of them had to.

The 7-Day SCV Numbers

Here is the house stuff. In the last seven days we had 88 new listings come to market. We had 88 properties cut or reduce their price in that same window. We had 48 properties close. And right now we have about 733 single family residences, condos, and townhomes total on the market for sale here in the Santa Clarita Valley.

Now the one that matters most. For roughly every home that listed, one canceled, expired, or got withdrawn. That is about a fifty-fifty rate once you include the back-on-market properties, which are homes that were in escrow and fell out of escrow. Sit with that for a second. As much activity going backward as forward. That is not a pricing story. That is a deal-survival story, and it is the part most agents will not put in front of you.

The Pre-Sale Home Inspection Fix

One of the biggest ways to prevent this is the pre-sale home inspection. I was talking to a seller this week, I am taking a listing next week, and on that listing we are doing a pre-sale home inspection before it ever hits the market. A pre-sale home inspection kind of cuts any change of mind out of it. It is not 100 percent for sure, if the buyer wants to cancel they are going to cancel, but it removes most of the surprises that make a buyer bolt.

Here is how it works. The home inspector puts together a report very similar to what the buyer is going to get. More than likely the buyer is still going to go hire their own different home inspector, and they should. I have never really seen it be the same inspector, and it should not be. Just like it is not the smartest move to use the seller's agent to also represent the buyer, you do not want the buyer using the inspector the seller already hired. The buyer wants their own independent set of eyes. But when the seller already knows what is in the walls, the deal gets a lot harder to blow up. The same prep logic is in the high-ROI fixes to make before listing.

When Buyers Play the Request-for-Repairs Game

Typically when you have that pre-sale inspection, it is very strong, and the buyers see that. What it shuts down is the cold-feet move dressed up as a repair request. Here is the move I see all the time. The buyer's inspector finds a couple of GFCI outlets. Each outlet is maybe 30 dollars, an electrician to handle it maybe 200 dollars total. And the buyer comes back asking for a 1,000 dollar credit. Why? Just because.

So I ask the question every seller should ask. Why a thousand dollars? Well, I just want it. Okay. Then we are going to write it up exactly that way, so the seller understands the request: two GFCI outlets, and because the buyer wants it, they are asking for a thousand dollars. When it has to be written down in plain language, the bluff usually falls apart. A request for repair that asks for money should be tied to an actual finding to get something genuinely remedied. It should not be a renegotiation of the sales price because the buyer got cold feet.

And it is always the uncle. The buyer was talking to their uncle, and the uncle said, when I bought my house I told the seller to knock off ten grand or I walk, and they did it. Great story. Sometimes it works. The negotiation discipline behind handling this without losing the deal is in the counter-offer strategy for sellers.

The Seller's Backup-Offer Leverage

Here is what the uncle story leaves out. Sometimes the buyer runs into a seller who says, are you kidding, forget it. We are kicking you out of escrow and going back to the other people who wrote offers, the ones we passed on because we thought you were the best because you had better financing or offered more money or were willing to waive a contingency. At that point the buyer still has an option to say, you know what, I am good, I just wanted to see if you would discount ten grand. That is the whole game, and a prepared seller wins it.

This is why a strong pre-sale inspection plus real backup offers is leverage. When the condition of the home is already documented and you have other buyers in line, a bad-faith demand to use being in escrow as a hostage situation simply does not work. The seller is not negotiating from fear. The flip side, overpricing yourself into a corner where you have no leverage, is in the emotional pricing death spiral.

Cosmetic Versus Health and Safety

When a seller has a pre-sale inspection, they usually attack the issues the inspector brought up, within reason. Health, safety, and real repairs, the things a seller would want to fix anyway if they were staying in the house, those get handled. A lot of the time the seller had no idea. They are not hiding anything. They just did not know there was a pinhole leak in the wall for the last fifteen years, with moisture and a little mold behind it. Now they get to fix it on their own terms, get a certificate that it is finished, and the issue is gone before a buyer ever sees it.

Cosmetic items are different. A water stain on the garage ceiling where the inspector notes the underlying pipe was already repaired and there is no active problem, that is cosmetic. A buyer can ask, but those cosmetic items are really not part of a fair negotiation. Knowing which is which is how a seller keeps the deal whole without giving away equity for a paint touch-up. The disclosure side of all this is in the disclosure disaster guide.

The Financing Moves That Kill Escrows

Now the other deal killer, and this one is on the buyer. When a property cancels, it is not always because the buyer found something wrong. People have a hard time believing that, but a lot of fallout is self-inflicted financing damage. One buyer went out and bought a 130,000 dollar Ford Raptor while they were in escrow. A truck like that wrecks your pre-approval. If you are making money hand over fist, buy what you want. But any change on the buyer's side needs to be vetted with the lender before you do anything.

And I mean anything. Even paying off a 50 dollar JC Penney card. You go back to your lender first and say, hey, I want to pay this off, is that okay. Sometimes the lender says go ahead. Sometimes the lender says wait, because that small balance on a 500 dollar limit was actually helping your credit, and paying it off or closing it could change your profile enough to bump your rate or sink your approval. Get the okay in writing, email it, keep it. That one habit saves deals.

So if you are a seller, you want a buyer whose financing is locked down and who understands not to touch it. And you want your listing built so that when a buyer does something foolish, you have backup offers to fall back on. That is the difference between being one of the 48 that closed and one of the half that fell out.

One Fixed Fee, Sellers Only

When you are ready, reach out. SellersOnlyAgent.com, ConnorWithHonor.com, of course, or I would not have gotten the shirt made. I represent sellers only, 100 percent on the seller's side, no dual-agency conflict. I did buyers for 21 years, and for the past several I have been sellers only, so when I tell you how a buyer is going to try to wiggle out of a deal, it is because I ran that side of the table for two decades.

And the work to sell a 500,000 dollar home and a 1.5 million dollar home is the same work. Same pre-sale inspection, same marketing, same negotiation, same cold-feet demands to shut down. So the fee is the same, a flat 17,000 dollars, with every other cost that touches your equity, escrow, title, and vendor charges, examined and negotiated. The daily AI and wider market breakdowns live over on the Daily Download, and you can watch this full episode on YouTube here. See you in the next one.