You were under contract. Now you are not. The most useful thing to understand is that this is common, it is usually the buyer financing, and the damage is mostly to your timeline rather than your title.
Why deals fall apart
In rough order of frequency:
- Financing. The buyer was preapproved, not approved. Underwriting found something, or their circumstances changed, or the lender pulled back at the last hour
- The inspection. The report came back with the roof and the furnace, and the buyer either renegotiated or walked
- The appraisal. Came in under contract and nobody covered the gap. See the appraisal came in low
- Title. A lien or ownership problem surfaced that could not be cleared in time
- The buyer own house. Their sale collapsed, so yours did too
- Cold feet. Real, and usually dressed up as one of the above
The contingencies are the whole story
A standard purchase contract gives the buyer specific exits: financing, inspection, appraisal, sometimes the sale of their own home. Inside those windows, a buyer who walks generally walks with their deposit. Outside them, it is a different conversation.
What your particular contract allows, and whether the earnest money is yours, depends on its exact terms and on how the exit was exercised. That is a question for the agent who wrote it or a real estate attorney, and it is worth asking rather than assuming either way.
What it actually cost you
- Weeks off the market, at the time of year you chose to sell
- Whatever you spent preparing, repairing or moving toward a closing date
- Plans built around a date that no longer exists, which for people moving for a job or ending a lease is the expensive part
- Position. A relisted house carries a visible history. Buyers ask why it came back, and the assumption is that the inspection found something
The part sellers underestimate
If the inspection is what killed it, you now know what the inspection says, and so will the next one. The same roof and the same furnace will come back on the next buyer report. Relisting without addressing it usually means running the same play and getting the same result, a few weeks later.
So there are really two choices: fix what the report found, or sell to someone who is not going to inspect their way out. The first costs money you may not have, which is its own trap, covered in repairs you cannot afford.
Why a cash sale does not fall through the same way
Almost every failed sale traces back to a lender. Remove the lender and you remove the failure mode:
- No financing contingency, because there is no financing
- No appraisal to come in low
- No inspection renegotiation, because the condition was priced into the offer at the start
- 7 to 14 days from agreement to closing, or a later date you choose
- No agent commission. Zero
- Closing costs handled case by case and written into the offer before you sign
- Toledo, Maumee, Perrysburg and Sylvania only, in any condition, with tenants in place and with back taxes owed
If your buyer walked over the roof and you do not want to run it again, send us the address. And if the deal died over something fixable and your house is otherwise solid, relist it, and we will tell you so.
General information, not legal advice. What your contract permits and who keeps the earnest money depends on its terms. Ask the agent who wrote it or a real estate attorney.