What happens to an Earnest Money Deposit if underwriting falls through?
Your Purchase and Sale agreement should have a financing contingency. If it doesn't, your money may be at risk, and the agent did you no favor. Edit - I answered when away from computer. This is a snapshot of the standard clause from the Greater Boston Real Estate Board. Each state has its own standard documents.   The normal process is to have some level of prequalification, showing a high probability of final approval, make offer, then after it's accepted, this form is part of the purchase and sale process.
"While the other people have tried to answer your question as thoroughly as possible, I fear they are entirely incorrect in answering your question itself as it stands. The answer is that there are no usual terms. There are a handful of different options coming out now for this exact scheme. Examples include the UK Governments ""Help To Buy"" scheme. Accomodation is offered at a normal rate, and a small portion of the rent is set aside each month. At the end of a fixed period, that money becomes a deposit which the letter hands over to a mortgage provider who accepts it as a deposit. This might well be a terminology thing, since the other scenario which people described falls into the same name you've used. That scenario is where the investor who owns the property is considering sale of the property, and is happy to negotiate a price up front for the next year. Usually the rent and price is higher than the market rate because if the market goes well over the next year they could end up out of pocket. Putting that into perspective, over that year they are gaining their $1,000 a month or so, but having $100,000 invested means a return of 12%. If the property value is over $250,000 which I believe to be more likely, they are achieving a return of (I think) 4.8%. That's not a bad rate, by any means, but realistically they are losing a bit more for maintenance, and they could be making more from their money. If the market were to go up in that time by more than 4.8% (my house, for instance, increased in value by over 15% in the last 12 months), they are making a substantial loss since you are getting a house at 15% below the market rate. The total works out to a 10.2% loss for them. Note that I don't know the US housing market at all, I'm speaking mostly from my experience of the market here in the UK. This is what I hear, what I see, and what I've played. To summarise a bit: Make sure you check your terms before signing anything." Couple of my friends went through a fraud agent who ran off with their money and the landlords were none the wiser. So it always pays to be a bit diligent. Are they a well known letting agents nationally ?  Many agents do have different accounts to manage their properties. Yours seems a case as such probably i.e. they manage the property on behalf of the landlord so keeping their monies differentiated. Did you sign an agreement ? If yes go through what is written in the agreement, most of it is same in all agreements but have a look anyway. Check if there is mention of deposit protection scheme. One thing you could do is go to a bank to do the transfer, the same bank where the letting agent holds their account and confirm from them if it is really a personal account or a business account. I am not sure how possible it is, but doesn't hurt to ask. If it is a personal account, then fraud is the most possible cause. The sort code should tell you which branch and which bank. Or the best option is to ask the estate agents to show a recent statement of the bank account, where the money is to be deposited into. Some tips "Right... so the fundamental question is if the roll-over cessation will cause short term interest rates to decouple from the Fed's say-so.  This is otherwise known as a bond auction failure.  The fed wants the treasury debt off their books, but they don't want to raise interest rates to make that happen.  So, they're going to experiment with uptake outside of the Fed to see if they can ""boil the frog"".  If the frog starts to squirm, I guarantee you that they're going to take the pot off the burner.  At their the proposed roll-over suspension rate, it'll take approximately 12 to 16 years to to get that two trillion off their books... and that assumes that nothing bad happens during that time.  &gt; Do you know of any good writeups that would back your side?  The closest you're going to find would be anything written about the JCB post 1995... but it looks like their program of direct stock market participation (technically, they're using ETFs, probably for financial cryptography purposes) [began in earnest in 2010](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-19/japan-bourse-head-turns-surprise-critic-of-kuroda-etf-purchases)  [this piece ](https://blog.kurtosys.com/central-banks-unthinkable-buying-stocks/) indicates that the Japanese aren't the only ones doing this.  England, The Swiss and even the EU is doing the same thing across multiple exchanges.  As the article points out, there's a two pronged effect of suppressing FX stock price correlations (strengthening or weakening of currencies raising or lowering stocks listed on associated bourses) and reducing volatility through market intervention (AKA plunge protection teams).   They also reference an Investco survey of  central bank reserve managers." "When you buy a house, the real estate agent or title company normally draws up a big sheet with all the costs and payments involved. There are typically two columns: one for amounts paid to or paid by the seller, and another for amounts paid to or paid by the buyer. Who is responsible for what is a legal question: this is pretty fixed. But it's very common for the seller to agree to pay some portion of the buyer's closing costs. In any house sale I've ever been involved in, whether as buyer or seller, nobody bothers to say which costs the seller is agreeing to pay. Rather, the seller just agrees to a number. Then somewhere on the sheet of costs there will be a line that says ""closing costs paid by seller"" or some such wording, and then it shows a minus to the seller and a plus to the buyer. (Or something equivalent, depending on how the sheet is organized.)  The amount is negotiated. When you make an offer, you'll say whatever numbers you are prepared to offer, like ""I offer to pay $100,000 for the house, seller to pay $3,000 of closing costs"". And whatever other conditions, seller to repair the leak in the roof, whatever. It makes sense for the seller to pick up some share of the closing costs, because the seller normally walks away with cash in hand while the buyer is struggling to come up with enough cash to make a down payment and pay all the closing costs, i.e. the seller probably can afford to give up some cash while the buyer may be struggling to come up with cash. The only costs I can think of that I've had before closing day are, (a) Earnest money. (b) Inspection. (c) Credit check or application fee to bank. Earnest money is applied to the purchase price at closing, so it's pretty much a moot point. The application fee is a potential deal-breaker. I've never heard of a seller agreeing to pay this, but I guess they could. But if you can't get the loan, you probably won't buy the house, so the seller would be out money for nothing.  Everything else is normally paid on closing day. They total up all the costs and all the money floating around and at the end the seller gets one check that is the net of everything and the buyer writes one check that is the net of everything, and the realtor or title company deals with getting the money to the right people. So there's normally no issue of paying things as they come up. You do it all at once." The answer depends on whether the company involved has 'limited liability'. Most, but not all public and listed companies and corporations have this, but not all so it is worth checking and understanding what you are getting involved with.   The expression 'limited liability' means that the owners (shareholders) of a company have a liability up to the amount of the face value of the shares they hold which they have not yet paid for. The difference is usually minor but basically it means that if you buy $10 of shares you have no liability, but if the company gives you $10 of shares, and you pay them (in cash or kind) $5, then you still have a liability of $5. If the company fails, the debtors can come after you for that liability.  An 'unlimited liability' company is a different animal altogether. Lloyds insurance is probably the most famous example. Lloyds worked by putting together consortiums to underwrite risk. If the risk doesn't happen, the consortium keeps the premiums, if it does, they cover the loss. Most of the time they are very profitable but not always. For example, the consortiums which covered asbestos caused the bankruptcies of a great many very wealthy people. They don't care..   the people making those choices are judged on the short term basis; ie yearly bonus.  They make the choice to move it over, reap a massive bonus for a couple of years before the profit starts to crumble then they bail out.  I've seen it happen at no less than 5 of my clients. Presumably you mean to ask what happens if State Street files chapter 7 bankruptcy, since not all bankruptcy proceedings end in liquidation.  SPY is a well known ticker, I can't imagine that there wouldn't be an eager bank willing to pay to pick up that ticker and immediately acquire all the assets related to it. The most likely scenario is that another bank would assume control of the ticker and assets, and the shares would continue trading as they always have. A less likely scenario is that no other financial institution wanted to acquire SPY, and the shares would be liquidated and the proceeds would go to the owners of shares of the ETF. Since the underlying assets are in companies that have actual value, the shares shouldn't trade at much of a discount prior to liquidation. Additionally, if there is a black swan event, there will probably be losses on the underlying assets, so it might even be helpful if the SPY fund was tied up in legal proceedings while everyone gets their heads straight in the market. As per the SIPC website: Most customers can expect to receive their property in one to three   months. When the records of the brokerage firm are accurate,   deliveries of some securities and cash to customers may begin shortly   after the trustee receives the completed claim forms from customers,   or even earlier if the trustee can transfer customer accounts to   another broker-dealer. Delays of several months usually arise when the   failed brokerage firm’s records are not accurate. It also is not   uncommon for delays to take place when the troubled brokerage firm or   its principals were involved in fraud. Source link: http://www.sipc.org/Who/SIPCQuestions/SIPCQuestion3.aspx