Seller breached real estate purchase contract

[John Wong]

Hi, Im a realtor in Las Vegas, NV representing a buyer and we got an accepted offer and opened escrow, ordered home inspection thus far. Everything is running along smoothly until I get a call from the listing agent saying that seller would like to cancel due to unforeseen circumstance which would need them to net a higher selling price so ultimately they need to cancel and is instead taking the house off the market. We offered 10k below asking which is more likely to appraise given the comps and unlikely to appraise if we offered sellers original asking price so we all agreed on our current contract price.

Is seller legally obligated to proceed with the sale? If we hire attorneys, Are we able to enforce the sale or would the courts be reluctant to force the sale upon the seller? At this point seller is willing to pay for the expenses incurred by the buyer to make this sale proceed but a deal is a deal and written in standard legal purchase contract here.

[Matt Devincenzo]

Let's pause the 'contract' part for a second...

People have a life outside the contract, and things can and do come up. So while it isn't something anyone like, we've all been on the other side of a 'promise' that we can't or need not to fulfill for whatever reason. The seller is at least 'owning' the issue by paying any out of pocket expenses which is what I would hope for. 

Now back to the contract, you could possibly sue for performance...but no one but the attorney's win. It will take a long time, your buyer better have real hard cash to put in escrow with the court potentially, and you better be rock solid on your ability to perform if the court sided with you. So the reality is for a regular purchase without any big upside (you said the contract price is basically FMV) there'd be no reason to force a sale. Obviously none of us can see the contract provisions, or know the details of your performance on the contract to date, but I'd let this one go.