Termination of real state agreement/buyer refuses to release earnest money deposit (sublease)

[Luluvela]

The buyer delayed closing twice, final closing was on Feb 5. Closing never happenned and our real state agent never knew why, he said he could never get a hold of the seller's agent. Buyer thinks he didn't cause us any damages (it's been two months since the property was taken off the market) therefore he is fighting to let us keep the $1000 earnest money deposit.

[SIZE=2][SIZE=2]If the buyer simply change his mind without a sound justification for walking away, the earnest money should go to the seller. It is scrowed to protect the seller . We lost opportunities to sell the house because the house was off the market thinking that it was sold.

The inspections went well, appraisal was fine, he was pre-approved. Now I hear that the buyer delayed the closing because he had a lease and needed to sublease it.
The fact is that the buyer monkey around trying to find a sublet for his apartment and now the buyer and agent are trying to find excuses for not releasing the earnest money. They are using the fact that we transfered the property to our LLC and the FHA flipping rules as an excuse......we never heard anything about this until after the closing......no one ever informed us about any difficulties with the double deed transfer and the FHA flipping rules.

Our agent told us the house will not be put back in the market until the earnest money situation is resolve (we want it, the buyer wants it), should I just forget about the earnest money? I feel our agent didn't do a good job working on our behalf....Anybody has any comments?
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