Earnest Money How to Get Your Deposit Back

4 Mar 2025 · 1 min

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In this segment, the speaker explains that when a real‑estate transaction collapses because a contingency (such as financing or inspection) isn’t satisfied, the buyer is generally entitled to a refund of the earnest money deposit. However, the refund is not automatic; it requires a mutual agreement between buyer and seller, typically documented via a signed mutual release. The speaker notes that in his experience the refund is almost always granted, but acknowledges the theoretical possibility of a seller refusing to sign the release, which would be an extremely rare edge case.

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If the deal falls through, you're usually entitled to getting your earnest money deposit back. Although you need to understand this, this is not just a given. Both the buyer and the seller have to mutually agree to refund the earnest money. I haven't experienced it, nor have I heard about an instance where if one of the contingencies was not satisfied— in other words, you weren't able to get financing or you weren't satisfied with the inspections— It's been— all of my experience says that you get your earnest money deposit back. But it wouldn't surprise me if there's one seller in a million out there who would choose to be a little stingy with just signing off on that, what's called a mutual release.