Why Buyer Asks Seller to Put Money in Escrow

[Andrew Yu]

I'm currently selling a property FSBO. After inspection, I got a list of things needing repair. Buyer's agent without asking me whether I wanted to do repairs myself or do price reduction. She just sent me a repair addendum with this exact wording, "Buyers requests that Seller to escrow $5000 at closing for all repairs listed in attached Exhibit A to be held at Pulaski County Title".

This really confuses me. I have never heard of such way to handle repairs before. My plan is to just hire a contractor to do all the repairs in Exhibit A. I saw the list. There's no way it would cost anywhere near $5000. My question is why would Buyer do this? What's his incentive? Can he even use that $5000 in escrow for repairs?