Who should be responsible for the deposit money?

[Shuangshuang Shi]

I am a newbie and recently invested into a condo in a 55+community. Told agent and mortgage company this is for investment from the beginning. We didn't have attorney review and moved on to closure. The night before closure, HOA sent us paper to sign stating owner have to live in the property for at least a year and wait in the waiting list for renting due to current renting rate of the community

is high. We communicated with seller agent saying we were not disclosed with this information. The sellers agent was very rude and didn't want to communicate. She simply said kill the deal and re listed the property right away. But she want us to get a mortgage denial letter to get the deposit back. And mortgage already approved and have the money in title company. So mortgage won't give us a denail letter. My agent now want me to prepare for the worst which is lose the deposit. Any advice?

[Mike Cumbie]

@Shuangshuang Shi

Sorry to hear you are going through this. I have to fall in line with the others on this. When you purchase a property you are the one who has to see if it will fit your "expected use" of the property. As far as disclosing that information the seller most likely didn't know or care enough to remember when they read it many years ago. They were living in it, who cares if it can be rented or not (in their eyes). You bypassed an attorney review and didn't review the HOA documents prior to having any outs left. They are saying you had a contract with contingencies, you passed all of the contingencies the deposit is theirs. You can try and fight, the fact you have a deposit might stop them from selling to someone else. Also your agent may be able to force it to not be in active in the MLS until the EMD is agreed on between you both because there is a contract on it.

Good Luck