Nobody wants to lose $10000 for nothing.

This man and his wife were about to buy a house when something unexpected came up that made them want to back out.

They were told they can’t get their deposit back if they cancel, but what they did next was genius.

Read below for the full story.

We won’t get our earnest back? Fine, we won’t be able to satisfy the requirements for closing.

I would like to say that this situation doesn’t apply to everyone, and perhaps may not be morally right, too. But it’s a question of $10k.

My wife and I decided to finally purchase a home in Southern California – A brand new, decked-out 4-bedroom home that really felt like something we didn’t deserve.

We gave an earnest deposit of $10k towards an escrow account which would then go into the closing costs. The closing period we requested was mid-September.

Meanwhile, my wife’s employer informed her that her team may go through some corporate restructuring and she may be axed. Nothing big, it happens in her industry at times, with all likelihood that she would simply transfer to another team.

However, what makes our situation tricky is that we are on a work visa. Which means finding another job and filing legal paperwork can be very dicey.

This couple was told they can’t get their deposit back.

With this development, and our general desire to seek out better opportunities abroad, we were getting nervous about this commitment.

We informed the builder and their lender that we are contemplating cancelling the loan because of this situation.

And we said we would like our earnest deposit. We never assumed it will be easy, but we’re hopeful someone would hear us out.

We immediately got told by the sales agent that since our deposit has been in escrow for more than 30 days, and since we have a conditional loan approval, we won’t get our deposit back.

The lender was very understanding but for some reason was anxious to have us cancel the loan and said that he would be happy to work with me on future loans.

I was a bit suspect since he was the builder’s lender, he would always back the builder. I told him to hold off, since I didn’t want to cancel before I fight to get my deposit back.

But they found a loophole that makes them eligible for a refund.

We requested the sales agent to reconsider and talk to her superiors, even offering to mediate a call between my wife’s manager and them to understand the impact.

The seller was under the opinion that unless she gets a pink slip, we don’t qualify to get our money back.

We started panicking but looked through the purchase agreement where we found a clause that if we failed to get financing, the buyer (us) is eligible for a refund.

When a few back and forth emails didn’t help, the seller agent simply asked if we would like to sign the cancellation agreement.

The date was July 31st. Closing was a bit more than 45 days away.

I realized, that while we would fight tooth and nail, our worst case scenario is we lose $10k. Whether it is on July 31st or we lose during Closing, it is the same to us.

However, if we keep the agreement ON without cancelling, only for us to fail at closing, the seller can’t find another buyer despite knowing that we won’t be closing.

So they got their money back.

I emailed her saying that we are confident that we won’t meet financing which is requirement for maintenance of escrow during closing, but we desire to continue with the closing date of Mid-September and not cancel.

This means, worst case we lose $10k in September. Worst case for the seller? They can’t find another buyer till then. We immediately (within 10 minutes) got told that we are getting our deposit back!

We were ecstatic!

We felt sorry that we weren’t able to close on our home, but we didn’t want to be in a bad loan and put everyone else under stress.

Reading the fine print pays off.

Let’s see what other people think to this story.

This one shares a probable scenario.

This user offers their personal thoughts.

This reader is happy for them

Another person shares their take on it.

And lastly, people are supporting what they did.

Play the system at its own game, if you dare.

If you liked that story, check out this post about an oblivious CEO who tells a web developer to “act his wage”… and it results in 30% of the workforce being laid off.