Lawyer is giving us a difficult time to back out of the deal after 10 days TOE served

[Luke Xu]

Hello, so here's the story

We're buying a property in NJ, it was supposed to close on 7/26 but the seller told us day of closing that they can't close until the 14th. We said we can't do that, and served them a 10 day notice. Our rate lock was also expiring on the 8/7 so as this was happening, our realtor was asking us about how much it would cost to extend our rate although we had no intention on extending the rate. Our goal was to force the seller to close, or we would back out of the deal.

Now, our lawyer is saying it's going to be difficult to get our earnest money back because of the conversations the realtor had, even though we did not agree to it, or ask for it at all.

Who is in the right here and what can we do?