By Richard Horgan Los Angeles (Knewz) — Crunching MLS data back through 2017, Redfin found that there were two times the percentage of home-purchase agreement cancellations spiked. The first was at the outset of the pandemic, in March-April of 2020. The second is this past month, June, thanks mainly to the steep rise in mortgage rates. According to Redfin, around 60,000 home-purchase agreements were scuttled in June, or 14.9 percent of the tracked total. This is a big jump from May, when the percentage was 12.7 percent. “The slowdown in housing-market competition is giving homebuyers room to n…