Buyer backed out after signing sale agreement

I have a home listed for sale in PA and recently received 3 offers the same day. It is a unique property with a creek setting. The home was a grist mill in the early 1800s and was converted to a home in the 1980s. It is a beautiful place but needs some work to be perfect and the 3rd and 4th floors are unfinished. -One offer was cash but too low. - A second offer was okay but the realtor we were working with (because this offer was written by our realtor) suggested asking for $10k more if we wanted to take that offer. This offer was contingent on obtaining a mortgage and a structural engineer assessment of the building. -A 3rd offer was a cash offer. It was $20k more than the next closest offer. The buyer sent a letter along with the offer stating how much he loved the house and the land. The 3rd offer included contingencies for home inspection, water, land use/zoning and pests. The agreement related to the home inspection states that the buyer would pay up to $30k for any repairs with no single repair costing greater than $10k. The roof and windows were excluded from the repairs as the condition is known. The earnest money of $10k was to be given within 5 days.

So we signed an agreement Wednesday evening. On Thursday morning our realtor was talking to the realtor for the buyer. The buyer and realtor apparently had a long conversation that morning and visited the property unbeknownst to us. Our realtor got a message from the buyers realtor that stated “T##r, he is getting cold feet..Had a long talk this am with him and told him bail out now. I will Let you know “. 20 minutes later our realtor received a call that the buyer is going to bail. The second offer is still available but $20k less than the offer we accepted. We received a termination letter from the buyer a few hours later. The reason refers to 12c of the contract which states: “For elected Inspection(s), Buyer will, within the Contingency Period stated in Paragraph 13(A), complete Inspections, obtain any Inspection Reports or results (referred to as “Report” or “Reports”), and accept the Property, terminate this Agreement, or submit a written corrective proposal to Seller, according to the terms of Paragraph 13(B). No inspections were done. The buyer backed out because he was in over his head apparently. Our realtor said our only course of action is to take the #2 offer which had we taken yesterday we would have asked for $10k more than what was offered. We pointed out that the termination letter we were sent does not match the facts and asked that it be corrected to show that the buyer backed out prior to completing inspections. Do we have any legal recourse because this buyer got cold feet? Are we entitled to any earnest money? No earnest was given yet so would we have to sue to get it? Does anyone think it is worth our time to have a real estate attorney review our situation? Or should we just cut our losses and hope buyer #2 follows through?

We lost out on the $10k we could have added to offer #2 if accepted. Overall we’ll end up with $20k less than the agreement we signed with the buyer yesterday.

submitted by /u/tboardz
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/RealEstate/comments/l7jfke/buyer_backed_out_after_signing_sale_agreement/