Buying & Selling Real Estate
Market News & Data
General Info
Real Estate Strategies
Landlording & Rental Properties
Real Estate Professionals
Financial, Tax, & Legal
Real Estate Classifieds
Updated over 2 years ago,
Seller and Wholesaler Keeping Investor Earnest Money
Hi All,
I have a problem that hopefully this community can help me out on. My partners and I recently found a property through a wholesaler. We executed a LOI with this wholesaler with a 14 day option. We sent $10,000 earnest money to the title company. So far, so good. We received the rent rolls, financials, etc 2 days after this. We started our due dilligence and decided on the 10th day that this investment was not a deal that we wanted. We then signed a release with the wholesaler and sent the signed release to the title company. 13 days later we got an email from the seller (who we did not know or have any dealings with) stating that he would not release the earnest money because we had tied up the property for 23 days. We contacted the title company and the wholesaler to try to figure this out. We were under the impression that the EM was being held at the title company under our contract with the wholesaler. Not a word was said about the title company putting the money in escrow under the original contract that we had nothing to do with. Now the wholesaler has gone dark and we just need to find out if anyone else has experienced this or something similar, and how it was rectified. By the way, avoid Dandre Butler (wholesaler) and Michael Johnson (seller). We've been told online that this is a scam they have been running.