Well @Bradley Smotherman I started reading this post and admired the spirit amd faith that you had to jump in so hugely.

Setting objectives in faith and family, for example.

It isn’t about religion, and your particular faith has little to do with effective marketing, so don’t get caught up with it.

My 2 cents...If the deal seems worth going after..Tell the seller your offer is "contingent on your "funding partners" approval"...and put down 100 dollars(in writing) as good faith to hold for cpl days while the numbers all get verified and you get your funding partners to walk thru and approve etc..then if they don't like it or the #'s don't work..you lose 100 bucks worse case..cause your funding partner backed out(recoup from him).But i think you are fine backing out if you make the offer..you have the right to back out..I think so anyway..I am not offering legal advice lol... far from it..I assume someone will correct me quickly if i'm wrong here :-)Go for it..you'll make it

Clearly not in good faith, as it is written!

You need consideration to make a contract binding and that can mean anything from your promise to fulfill the obligations of the contract to an EMD deposit.An EMD is just a good faith promise that you are serious is going through a deal.

Herb loved nothing more than studying and talking about REI, and was a faithful reader of Bigger Pockets.

I would talk to an RE attorney just to confirm if its a good tatic but you acted on good faith...so should the seler.

Once TruLoan had a ball park Good Faith Estimate for me, I had to snapshot/document the process of pulling that amount out of the HELOC, and then showing the new loan balance, interest rate and minimum payment so that they could finalize their underwriting.

It is just a good faith deposit so imo it is not a big deal on getting an exact amount or percentage.