Q: Seller insists that he keeps the deposit after we decided to withdraw with business purchase due to unforeseen issues.
We made an offer to a convenience store.
We started the process with a Escrow company. The purchase includes transferring of current seller’s alcohol license.
In the signed contract, $10,000 was put as a deposit. Escrow company will release full amount once ABC application is set on APPROVED.
Everything was good except when we checked the status of our pending ABC license, it was put on HOLD due to seller having a violation last year. It needs to be taken care of before the completion of the transfer. Since then, we have just decided to withdraw from the sale altogether due to this delay (we already anticipated with landlord May/June is lease start date.) Seller explained that this incident happened last year and that he did not know they will fine him now.
If we had known incident happened, we would have not made an offer. Does he have the right to keep the deposit?
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