The dispute went into ethics committee for the escrow company and will be tied up for a least one week. 

There is such a simple answer (or 3 or 4 actually) but I'm not in the habit of giving advice to people that are disingenuous and not willing to be ethical in their dealings with others.  

Or you can buy now and get paid while building equity via principle recapture. good luck!

If its your work ethic then your not going to find anyone to partner with, maybe someone willing to hire you.  

So unless you made it clear to them that you ONLY want them to find you houses, but never Buyers, then I would say that ethically, you probably should wear the $500 this time - but then clarify your arrangement going forward. 

You can always refi if it appreciates or you recapture the principle to the standard 75% or 80% LTV. 

@Jay Hinrichs   Wasn't trying to imply not to follow the rules of the FREC and NAR Code of Ethics.

To my disappointment I was denied a loan of $170,000 from quicken due to high debt to income ratio ( I was over excited and failed to do my due diligence) I didn't think to add in the new payment into my calculations.....oops, But with that nice lesson learned I now know what needs to be done in order to get either 50-80k on a heloc. so my question is when the lender calculates the dti on the heloc do they use the interest only payment or principle & interest.

Which is a wiser decision: Pull money from my retirement account or use the equity from my principle residence? 

To help fund "one of my whys" of educating humanity on the principles and natural laws of the world.