I got the impression it was a Fannie thing, not an individual investor thing, but I haven't probed any deeper with him yet.

Hello Bigger Pockets Community,My name is Cherrelle, and I'm passionate about diving deeper into real estate.

Take the emotion out of it, know your numbers, and stick to them!

The "false scarcity" and "gaslighting" stuff must come from some Instagram guru talking about deep emotional intelligence or relationship problems advice.

There is a huge gap between that and owning real estate.That aside, you may need to dig deeper to understand why the spreads are where they are. 

To go a bit deeper- I think you are overanalyzing things.

Understanding we're all emotional creatures helps but at the end of the day this is business and if we can't communicate like adults, it isn't going to work. 

East Tennessee home sales increased 8.9% from the previous month, but were down 1.4% from a year ago.The median sale price was $354,000 — up 10.3% from the previous year.Total housing inventory increased from the previous year – up 24.0% from a year ago.Half of the homes sold were under contract in 28 days or less, up from 25 days a year ago.45% of homes sold for the asking price or above, with 21% selling for more than the asking price. 8% sold for at least $10,000 over asking and 2.6% sold for at least $25,000 over asking.The sale-to-list price ratio increased to 97.8% – up from 97.6% last month.New construction represented 16.5% of total home sales.If you want to dive deeper into some numbers in the Knoxville and surrounding area I'm always happy to nerd out. 

If you're investing in real estate, it's better to really study it then actually go deeper, not wider, and keep it trim.

Figure out other ways to de-stress your life so you can keep your W2 for as long as possible - outsourcing disliked tasks, working on mental/physical health, shorter commute, etc...Retirement seems like an emotional state of relatively low stress and contentment.