Legal Question in Real Estate Law in California

It depends upon what the term "accepted" means. If both the owner of the house and the bank agreed to your offer without any strings attached, then there was a binding contract, but if it merely was the case that the seller agreed subject to the bank agreeing, then there is no binding contract because the bank can decide the offer was too low.

Mr. Shers answer is basically correct. There is a lot of detail in a real estate purchase/sale contract, many contingencies that will allow one side or the other to walk away from the deal. But sometimes people think that just because there are contingencies they can walk away for any reason, even ones unrelated to the contingencies, which is not true. So you may or may not have grounds to take legal action. There is no way to say without going into all the details of the contract and transaction. You should bear in mind, however, that your recovery is going to be rather limited. Presumably the true value of the house is the higher offer. So your base damages are only the difference between the amount you had agreed to pay and the amount it sold for. You may be able to recover some other consequential damages, but that is your basic case. Was that difference enough to be worth going to court?