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Earnest money

I need insight on earnest money.

We have had some buyers that have been straight up difficult. They have been looking for a home since 2020 if that tells you anything. They want everything repaired on their terms, which is fine but we have had enough and aren’t doing it. We have a well maintained home, new roof, new AC, new paint, new lighting, and more. They have had a home inspection and we have agreed to fix everything on the list. However, one item is our patio, which they want 5000 to “fix”. We hired a structural engineer who says this is cosmetic repair, there is nothing structurally wrong with the house.
The realtor says they can get the earnest money back because we didn’t disclose this in the non-disclosure agreement. However, the contract states a non-cosmic defect that is not disclosed can give them the money back. This is COSMETIC defect, we are not hiding anything. Then she says, we are terminating the contract based on mutual agreement and they get their earnest back. This is my last message to the buyers that are requesting we give them 5k to fix it. “As a gesture of goodwill, we are willing to contribute $1,000 towards the patio to a company OR seal the crack as noted by the structural engineer. If this offer is not acceptable, we are prepared to list the home back on the market.” They chose to terminate the contract because we would not give them the full 5k.

We are also in a time crunch. We have a contract on a new home with builder that has a significant down payment where we have to buy the home within 30 days.

Do we have any recourse here?

submitted by /u/savvysipper
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source https://www.reddit.com/r/RealEstate/comments/1ea10az/earnest_money/
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