Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Illinois
My husband and I were in the process of buying a home when the deal fell through due to no communication between Loan officer and everyone else involved. My question is: we put down $1000 in earnest money and because of our loan officer did not communicating with our realtor, the sellers realtor and attorney and us the deal fell through days before closing (literally) and the seller does not want to give us our earnest money back, is there anything that we can do about this? Long story short our loan officer made everyone believe that this deal was going to happen. Two week prior to closing he would not answer or return anyone's calls, 2 day's before closing he calls us and tells us that my husband credit score dropped and that the deal isn't going to happen. He instructed my husband earlier in the month to pay off three things that were listed on his credit report (the same three things that were on there when he told us that we were preapproved and to start looking). So when my husband paid them his score dropped. This happened in mid May and we were to close on June 30, 2014. The seller of the home we were buying moved to Texas sometime in between then (we didn't know) and know they don't want to give us back our money. Our realtor contacted us and told us that he won't give us the full $1000 only $250. Is this legal? Are we entitled to the full amount we placed? Our realtor said that our money is in a escrow account. Please if you have any information it would be greatly appreciated.
1 Answer from Attorneys
What does the sales contract say about the earnest money?