Legal Question in Real Estate Law in Maryland

Re: Real estate Contracts and Deposits and appraisal proximaty/radius limits

Depending on the contract language, the seller may have the option of either forfeiting your deposit, suing you for breach of contract, or both. If he sues you, his damages would be any additional sale costs and the difference between your price and the price he gets from a second buyer. Typically the seller takes the deposit and puts the property back on the market, unless it would be very difficult to resell.

As far as the appraiser is concerned, they try to find "comparables" as close in location and features, size, etc., as they can, but sometimes in order to do this they have to "expand" the search. There is no set rule on how far the appraiser can go. If you had a well written financing contingency in the contract and a low appraisal caused the lender to limit the loan offer to less than what the contingency calls for, you would have been able to cancel the contract without penalty.