Contract plus paid deposit?

[Zachary Lowe]

After several emails with the sellers realtor regarding a commercial multi-family, they stated the following:

"There is much information (detailed maintenance, tax returns, costs, etc.) that they will be glad to make available during a due diligence period with a contract and a paid deposit."

I'm still very new to all of this, but how do they expect me to realistically establish a valuation without this information to even make an offer to get to the contract phase?

Additionally, I'm assuming "paid deposit" is earnest money, or no?

Of course I could email the realtor back for clarity but I wanted to ask here first because I also interrupted this email as a "start showing us money or stop wasting our time."

Any and all feedback is welcome.