I had 2 similar situation actually occur in the past few weeks. In the first one my buyer was concerned about the loan contingency so on page 1 of the RPA we marked that the loan contingency shall remain in place until the close of escrow. That was air tight and although the seller didn’t like it we kept it in place and we did successfully close. That was a short sale in Mira Mesa believe it or not. In the second case this was exactly like the case described above here. We hit the contingency removal time and my buyer simply did not have his financing locked in because he had a crappy mortgage broker/lender. I told the listing agent we could not remove contingencies… They kept pressing and pressing and we kept telling them we could not. We told them if they wanted to cancel escrow they could but that in no way could we remove the contingencies. I kept it all documented and 2 weeks after the supposed contingency removal date we did indeed have to cancel because this person could not obtain the financing he needed. The seller did indeed return the deposit. I agree with what you are saying and there could indeed be cases that I am not considering. Luckily I have not run into them and I think if your agent is good, documents everything and such, you should be able to see your deposit come home.
