When Is A Deposit Expected? Who Should I be frustrated With?

[Danny N.]

Long story short last friday, someone who lived in my vacation condo building signed a contract to buy my place, and my realtor suggested I fly down to miami to look at new places. I bought tickets for the next day to go over and find a new place, I spend saturday and sunday looking at new places and the buyers realtor tells us the deposit will be there first thing tuesday morning when banks open. The buyers realtor asks if his client can come by with an interior designer to measure our place to buy furniture bc he's headed back to italy and wants to make sure they have everything before he goes

Tuesday comes and the buyers realtor tells us his client cant close for 90 days bc the money is in italy and due to some investment rules or whatever the money needed 90 days. So later that day, I run into the buyer in the building since he has a smaller condo in the building and was just upgrading. We stop and talk for a second and I propose a deal where he would give me a nonrefundable deposit and in turn I would give him the 90 days he needed, and the buyer was ecstatic and said thank you and he would 100% do that and his realtor would begin the paperwork.

I call my realtor and she was thrilled we were able to hammer out a deal, then the next day, the realtor for the buyer ignored us all day long and then finally at 5 pm texted my realtor and said they would be cancelling the contract.

Was my realtor supposed to take a deposit when the contract was signed? Was it unprofessional of the buyer to give us all these stories about not being able to get the money, then agreeing to work with me if I took it off the market and gave him 90 days only to ignore us the next day and still say no? I just feel deflated bc it now makes me question when do I move forward on the next offer? If I wait for the 15 day inspection period to finish before beginning a condo search then I wont have much time to obtain financing and close within a 30 day window or whatever a buyer would want

How would you go about selling a vacation home in the future and making sure the buyer was serious, would you immediately require a deposit?