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.
I am sorry for your troubles, but impressed with your problem solving skills.  Keep going, things will get better.   Your best hope is to find a place that does manual underwriting.  If they do computer generated stuff, then you will be kicked for sure.  If you can show 20% down, and have some savings, and have some history of paying bills, then you might be approved.   Here in Florida, RP Funding still does manual underwriting.  Another one that is mentioned is Church Hill mortgage.  Also you might check with local credit unions. Of course your best bet to be approved is to be open and state upfront the challenges.  You have to find someone that has the ability to think, has the ability to see passed the challenges, and has the authority to do so. "a lot of companies will ""class"" their shares and the founders will hold on to the A class shares so that they can distribute more than 50% but still retain the majority of control over company decisions. A lot of this stuff is set out in the underwriting." "Probably the most significant difference is the Damocles Sword hanging over your head, the Margin Call. In a nutshell, the lender (your broker) is going to require you to have a certain amount of assets in your account relative to your outstanding loan balance. The minimum ratio of liquid funds in the account to the loan is regulated in the US at 50% for the initial margin and 25% for maintenance margins. So here's where it gets sticky. If this ratio gets on the wrong side of the limits, the broker will force you to either add more assets/cash to your account t or immediately liquidate some of your holdings to remedy the situation. Assuming you don't have any/enough cash to fix the problem it can effectively force you to sell while your investments are in the tank and lock in a big loss. In fact, most margin agreements give the brokerage the right to sell your investments without your express consent in these situations. In this situation you might not even have the chance to pick which stock they sell. Source: Investopedia article, ""The Dreaded Margin Call"" Here's an example from the article: Let's say you   purchase $20,000 worth of securities   by borrowing $10,000 from your   brokerage and paying $10,000 yourself.   If the market value of the securities   drops to $15,000, the equity in your   account falls to $5,000 ($15,000 -   $10,000 = $5,000). Assuming a   maintenance requirement of 25%, you   must have $3,750 in equity in your   account (25% of $15,000 = $3,750).   Thus, you're fine in this situation as   the $5,000 worth of equity in your   account is greater than the   maintenance margin of $3,750. But   let's assume the maintenance   requirement of your brokerage is 40%   instead of 25%. In this case, your   equity of $5,000 is less than the   maintenance margin of $6,000 (40% of   $15,000 = $6,000). As a result, the   brokerage may issue you a margin call. Read more: http://www.investopedia.com/university/margin/margin2.asp#ixzz1RUitwcYg" Then we should create a derivative that allows people to bet on the bond failing, and package tons of them into securities, which you can swap for cash. You're swapping a bet on someone defaulting on their credit... Swapping a credit default... Hmm... I don't see this going wrong in any way. It depends on the broker. The one I use (Fidelity) will allow me to buy then sell or sell then buy within 3 days even though the cash isn't settled from the first transaction. But they won't let me buy then sell then buy again with unsettled cash. Of course not waiting for cash to settle makes you vulnerable to a good faith violation. Wow the collateral totally eliminates the purpose of the swap for B, to have a consistent steady cash flow and stable expenses.   It probably wouldn't be worth a broker's time unless it was in the millions.  They should invent interest rate swaps for the mass market. I'm patenting that! Banks can't simply make loans in the void. This is how the cash flow works, generally:  1. Depositers *add* cash into the bank. The Bank now has cash. 10% of that cash is held on *reserve* per law. This cash is held on the balance sheet as an *asset* (cash) *and a liability* (demand deposits).   2. Someone requests a loan. The loan is funded from the non-reserved cash of these deposits. This results in a lessening of an asset (cash), and the creation of a new asset (loan).  3. Traditionally, as the debtor pays back the loan, the interest is distributed in some sort of split between the bank and the depositors. This means cash in from the loan and interest, and a liability (deposits) also go up.  4. Alternatively, while the above still happens, the bank can *securitize* the loan and sell that to investors. Investors then get access to the loan and its income, and the bank collects a fee. However, this means more cash on hand for the bank to originate additional loans without going near the reserve requirement.   If a bank extends too many loans and its reserve is threatened, it must borrow either from the fed or from other banks. These loans must be paid back. "The  earnest money deposit generally is not delivered with the offer. This generally isn't done because you may find out that your offer is going to be rejected immediately. You may have decided to make an offer under their stated selling price, you may have added a condition they are unwilling to meet. There is also the situation where other parties have already made an offer and their offering price has exceed yours; so your offer is rejected or at least slowed down while the continue negotiations with the other potential buyer. In these cases getting a cashiers check before making the offer delays the offer, complicates the movement of money within your accounts, and delays your ability to make an offer on a another house. If the offer on the first house is rejected on Friday, and the bank is closed on Saturday, and you have to wait until Monday to redeposit the check; then you have to delay an offer on the perfect house you see on Sunday. Of the three options you present the second one, ""I can put a rider on the P&S which warrants that the check will be delivered in a set amount of time like three days."" You may also find similar language in the local version of the standard real estate contract. This delay in writing the check makes sense for another reason, the manner of the deposit and how it is to be made, how it is to be held, and under what terms it can be released  should also be a part of the negotiation. You want to make sure it is being kept by a third party, you both have to trust that 3rd party, you need to know what are the exact conditions regarding that money. The purpose of the deposit is to convince the seller that you are serious, and that the knowledge that you will lose the deposit makes you likely to go through your required parts of the transaction.  Also more and more of these deposits are being done electronically, there is no check involved." "A repossessed automobile will have lost some value from sale price, but it's not valueless.  They market ""title loans"" to people without good credit on this basis so its a reasonably well understood risk pool." That sucks.  If BofA is taking responsibility for the insurance payment, then they should..., well, take responsibilty - full responsibility.  I hope these people get reimbursed fairly.  Didn't their insurance company contact them about the policy?  If not, I'd certainly be shopping for a new insurance company, and possibly I'd include them in a lawsuit.  The insurance company should be contacting the bank **and** their customer.  Mine sent me a couple of letters, saying a copy was sent to the bank (although I think they still had the original bank, not BofA).  But BofA had recently paid the premium, so they ignored it - basically dropped the ball.  When I got the 2nd letter from the insurance company, I called again, and the guy at BofA got right on the ball, checked it out, and fixed it very quickly, then helped me cancel my escrow so I could handle it directly in the future.  Perhaps I was lucky to get someone who cared about their job enough to follow through.  But I also jumped in to make sure it got taken care of, so if he hadn't, I would have been bothering them until they did. You are asking about what happens when an ETF/mutual fund company goes bankrupt. If you were asking about a bank account you would be asking about FDIC coverage.  Investment funds are different, the closest thing to FDIC protection is provided by  Securities Investors Protection Corporation (SIPC) SIPC was created under the Securities Investor Protection Act as a   non-profit membership corporation. SIPC oversees the liquidation of   member broker-dealers that close when the broker-dealer is bankrupt or   in financial trouble, and customer assets are missing. In a   liquidation under the Securities Investor Protection Act, SIPC and the   court-appointed Trustee work to return customers’ securities and cash   as quickly as possible. Within limits, SIPC expedites the return of   missing customer property by protecting each customer up to $500,000   for securities and cash (including a $250,000 limit for cash only). SIPC is an important part of the overall system of investor protection   in the United States. While a number of federal and state securities   agencies and self-regulatory organizations deal with cases of   investment fraud, SIPC's focus is both different and narrow: restoring   customer cash and securities left in the hands of bankrupt or   otherwise financially troubled brokerage firms. SIPC was not chartered by Congress to combat fraud. Although created   under a federal law, SIPC is not an agency or establishment of the   United States Government, and it has no authority to investigate or   regulate its member broker-dealers. It is important to understand that   SIPC is not the securities world equivalent of the Federal Deposit   Insurance Corporation (FDIC), which insures depositors of insured   banks. One possible route is to try to have no credit. This is different than bad credit. If you build up a good downpayment (20%), a number of banks would do manual underwriting for you. Not going to happen for Facebook since there will be too much demand and the order will go to the top clients of the underwriting investment banks.  In general though, if you wanted a piece of a smaller IPO you'd just have to get in touch with a broker whose investment banking department is on the underwriting syndicate (say Merrill Lynch or Smith Barney) since IPOs often have a percentage that they allocate to retail clients (i.e. you) as well as institutional (i.e. hedge funds, pension funds, mutual funds etc.). The more in demand the IPO the harder it is to get a piece. I think what ended up happening with this is the canadian banks issued some high risk debt that is in line with the bail-in requirements. So the interest payments are more, but they could lose it all in a bail-in situation.  There was actually some debate about the sale of the debt not being fairly handled, but from the sounds of it the notes sold pretty quickly. So there doesn't seem to be much risk to depositors and investors don't seem to be worried about the additional risk. Also at the time of the banks becoming compliant with the Basel regulation I think most of them jacked their service fees to help with raising the additional capital requirements.  http://business.financialpost.com/2014/07/21/rbc-responds-to-complaints-about-issue-of-nvcc-subordinated-debt/ Out of curiosity I went through a couple of prospectuses and all contained various clauses for the event where LIBOR is not published although the language suggests more of anticipation of brief technical difficulties. Some are rather vague and prone to manipulation.