Your best path is to work through your contingencies, provide loan commitment asap and then ask the seller.

Also, if you have cash to complete the purchase, you can get preapproved and then make an offer with proof of funds and without a financing contingency with a standard 30 days to close.

And a large decision point for them to rezone it to allow 1-4 family was contingent on me living there (which should not be relevant to a project improving the community).

He will do it on contingency base.You must pursue BTC in a criminal case which is ongoing at the county level and may reach State level You can file a complaint.

This appears to be a misuse of said contingency.

When we did it, we did score some great deals, but what we found was that we were visiting so many properties to understand our "strike price" (the maximimum we would pay for the property when taking into account rehab costs, hold times, interest on any debt, closing costs, real estate commissions, a contingency reserve for "unexpecteds", etc) that the math started to not make as much sense.

I know a buyer that would offer 10% down for earnest money, but he made it contingent on his personal inspection of the property within X days.

And yeah, 15-20% was what I was normally seeing as far as an overrun which is where the contingency came from. 

@Chelsea Pfeiffer There is a big contingent of chicago investors that make their way out to sevier county for sure.

Make a contingent that the XX amount on the Cashiers check or wire will be used from the home owner to pay off the net pay off mortgage and then buy the house for a thousand bucks or something in that order.