Hey, Kyle here with winthehouseyoulove.com.
Today, we're talking about how does earnest money work.
You're going to understand #1 how you can keep your earnest money if
a deal falls apart and why it might be helpful to have earnest money
to be able to have your offer stand out amongst all of the other offers.
Okay.
So first of all, earnest money, people also call this a good faith
deposit and it means exactly that.
It means, hey, this is money that we're going to put on the contract when you put
in an offer on a home to be able to say, hey, we're putting some skin in the game.
We're serious about buying this home because the seller wants to know that
you're serious when you put in an offer if they're going to accept it.
So earnest money is paid upfront with the accepted offer.
So what that means is let's say you see house it's 123 Main Street.
You say, hey, we want to write an offer.
So you write an offer for maybe $200,000 and you say, hey, we want to put $2,000
in earnest money on that contract.
So the seller now sees that.
You don't have to give up the $2,000 until they accept that offer.
Okay.
So it's money that you're putting on the contract is to tell the seller,
Hey, when you accept this offer, we're going to go ahead and put some money in
that's going to be held by a third party.
So they're going to hold it so there's no dispute over somebody taking the money.
But just to show you that we're going to put money up front and you don't have
to wait all the way until the end to see if we're actually going to follow
through with our promise on this contract.
So the main point of this is it gives the seller some compensation if the buyer
backs out, because put yourself in the shoes of a seller, imagine you accepted
an offer for somebody to buy your home and you go through a whole process and
maybe you're 25 days in and then all of a sudden, the buyer says, you know what?
Eh we just don't feel it anymore and they walk away.
Well, you, as a seller, you made plans around somebody purchasing your home.
So earnest money can be some compensation for the seller when things don't
work out in the seller's favor.
Now there are protections for the buyer.
There are a lot of circumstances when the buyer can get that money back.
And circumstances where the buyer can lose the earnest money.
And we'll talk about those here at the end.
So when we're talking about how much earnest money do you need, it's
really going to be best to talk with a Realtor about how much earnest
money you want to put on a contract.
For instance, it's very common in my local market for people
to not use earnest money at all.
Earnest money in some markets is becoming a little bit of an outdated
practice and it really just depends how competitive the market is and
what's going on in that market.
For instance, you know, I'm in Dayton, Ohio, so or average median
income is lower than most areas, most bigger metropolitan areas.
So most people don't put a lot of money down, up front, but you go to a higher
income area, let's say somewhere like Brentwood, Tennessee, or Nashville, then
you're going to see earnest money be higher because people have more income
and assets to put down on contracts and the market's really, really crazy.
So now let's talk about why would we want to do this.
Number one, i's going to help your offer stand out.
Okay.
If you have, if a seller sees two identical offers, they're both the same
purchase price all the details are the same, but one buyer says I'm not going to
put any earnest money down and the other says, we're going to put $3,000 down.
Then the seller is going to say, well, this buyer is more serious.
They're willing to put more money up front.
Okay.
Also contracts are a big deal.
This is why earnest money exists in the first place.
Sometimes what people will do is they'll go write on a home, they'll
write an offer for a home, but they're not actually willing to
follow through with that contract.
And that becomes a really big issue because you're tying a lot
of people up in the process when you're trying to get a home.
And so you need to treat it like a contract that you need to execute.
You have to follow the rules inside of that contract.
If you get out of it, then you run the risk of losing your earnest money.
Okay.
So do you need it?
Again, this is going to depend a lot on the market that you're in.
If you can, it's always best to not put earnest money down
or put as little possible down.
So you're risking as little as possible and just creating less complexity
in your loan or in your purchase.
But some markets might require it.
So again, talk with your Realtor about, hey, is earnest money needed?
If so, how much do you think that we actually need to be
able to get this offer through?
Now, at the very end your earnest money is credited towards your closing costs.
Okay.
So it's not an extra fee.
Sometimes people feel like it's an extra fee.
Think of it almost like a pre down payment.
Okay.
So, let's say that you put $2,000 earnest money on an offer.
Okay.
Well, within maybe the first week of being under contract, you'll go and
submit that $2,000 to a third party.
Maybe it's the seller's Realtor or it's your buyer's realtor.
It really just depends on who's holding it.
Maybe a title company is holding it.
So you submit that $2,000.
Now let's say at the very end of the contract we're maybe 25,
30 days later, and your final cash due at closing is $10,000.
What will happen is the $2,000 that you already submitted is going to
be deducted from the final amount.
So you actually owe $8,000 because you already prepaid $2,000.
Okay.
And the reason why you prepay that amount is it gets held in this contingency
fund in the event that there has to be a dispute over who gets earnest money.
So we're gonna talk about how to make sure you don't lose the
earnest money in that account, but first let's have a CalmMoment.
Okay.
So if you're considering earnest money, you're probably in a competitive market.
All right.
And it can feel like things are moving so fast.
And when everything's speeding by us, it's easy to make decisions that we
maybe didn't think through very quickly.
And this happens, I see this happen so often with buyers where they
go and write an offer on a home because they kind of were feeling it
emotionally, but, then they didn't go follow through with that contract.
They got cold feet and had to walk away and ran the risk of
losing their earnest money.
So really what I would say is take a moment to really consider: is
this something that you want to do?
Sometimes it's really helpful to just begin writing down: why
do you want to purchase a home?
Are these numbers going to make sense for you?
Did the logistics make sense?
Don't go through this process and just get caught up and be led by
the emotion, through the process because the emotion will carry you
way too far in a direction and a distance that you don't want to be in.
Okay.
So how do we make sure we don't lose our earnest money.
First we need to talk about and understand contingencies.
So contingencies are going to be this little blue line here, and your
contingencies are elements of your contract that basically give you
a period of time, a little window where you can exit the contract
completely legally with no problems.
So a couple of those are you have an appraisal contingency.
So this is where it says, hey, the home has to appraise for the purchase
price or the buyer can back out.
You also have an inspection contingency and the inspection contingency normally
says something like the buyer has 10 to 15 days to inspect the property as long
as it meets the buyer's standards, then they can move forward with the contract.
If the buyer, for any reason, doesn't like what they see in the inspection.
They can exit the contract legally.
Then you also have another one which is financing.
So if you're getting a loan for home, this financing contingency, says the
buyer has a certain amount of days to get approved for a loan and if they don't,
they can exit the contract legally.
So these contingencies give you outs in the contract if you need them.
And this is important when it comes to earnest money, because if you get
out of a contract pre contingency, meaning you're still within those
windows where you're allowed to exit, you can get your earnest money back.
If you exit a contract post contingency, then your earnest money is in jeopardy.
Okay.
So again, earnest money is held by another party and it's refundable if
you're in the pre contingency period.
So let's run through an example.
Let's say you put $2,000 in earnest money.
Let's say the title company is holding it right now.
And then let's say the property appraises for $10,000 lower than the purchase price.
Well, you can back out of the contract and get your earnest money back.
It's refundable to you because you're in your contingency period.
Or let's say you have an inspection and you got that done and came
back and there was a bunch of mold and maybe some structural issues.
You can back out and get your earnest money back.
Now, some things you have to watch for is if you get outside
of your contingency windows.
So for instance, like an inspection might say, the buyer
has to do this within 15 days.
Well, if you do your inspection on day 16, and then you want to
back out, you're outside of your contingency window for the inspection.
And if you back out because of the inspection results you fall under this
post contingency category and the seller might be able to keep your earnest money.
So if you try to back out of the contract, post contingency,
meaning, you know, you're, you're following everything in the contract.
There's no more out anymore.
Your appraisal came in fine, you have financing, your inspection came back fine.
If you back out, just because you got cold feet or you don't feel it anymore,
or some other deal came up, the seller has the potential to keep that earnest money.
Now, it's not an automatic thing.
Earnest money can kind of have some drama going on to it because it has to be agreed
upon or arbitrated on how it gets handled.
So first it has to get agreed upon.
So no matter what happens, pre contingency or post contingency, both parties
have to sign on the earnest money saying, hey, you know, as a seller,
I agree to give it back to the buyer.
Or maybe the seller says, hey, I don't agree to give it back.
And it might have to be arbitrated.
Now different contracts, spell out how earnest money
is handled in different ways.
For instance, in our local market if a seller wants to keep the earnest
money, it actually has to go into a trust fund for two years and then it
gets, it's given back to the buyer unless they pursue legal action.
In other markets, it's not like that.
Read your contract and it's going to spell out how earnest money is handled.
But what this is really doing for the seller is it's giving them
compensation if a buyer backs out.
And it's preventing buyers from just going around and making offers that they're not
really serious about following through.
So the biggest thing to remember is make sure you're meeting
these contingency dates.
Okay.
Ask your realtor what those are, make those notes on your calendar.
So, you know, like, hey, our inspection date is coming up here.
Our appraisal dat is up here.
Everything's moving along fine.
That way you don't run into any of these issues with earnest money.
Earnest money really doesn't give too much of a hassle, but sometimes
it can add a little bit of drama if things go a little bit south.
So it's always good to know what's going on with the earnest money.
How much you need to put down and then those dates to keep in mind as well.
If you want to learn how to write a good offer, that's going to stand
out to a seller, this video over here is going to help you do just that.