$10,000 Earnest money

[DMenscha]

Originally Posted by hindsight2020

I live in louisiana. My understanding is that there is no legal requirement to put down "earnest money" when making an offer. Is this correct?

Contracts usually call for "consideration" (Earnest Money). Without any consideration, there is no enforceable contract. With agreement of both parties, no earnest money may be OK, but good luck getting the seller to agree with it.

Pre approval means almost nothing these days.

[onlooker123]

I would strongly against put down more EMD. For the one I am now under contract, I made the mistake to put down $10,000 again. I asked my agent where the EMD would go, the agent said "The emd gets put into escrow account. If it's more than what commissions are due, the difference gets sent to Settlement company, if it's less they send difference to [buyer's agent]. Now, I am totally confused. I thought the seller is supposed to pay the commission and my EMD is supposed to be counted toward either my closing cost or down payment...

[cleasach]

We were in contract to buy and were told we had to pay 10 percent of the purchase price when we signed the contract. That was well over 10k.

The sale fell through unfortunately due to the death of the seller but we got it all back a few weeks later.