What are buyer rights under form 2-T if they can’t sell their existing property?

In North Carolina, if the Offer to Purchase and Contract (Form 2-T) is used to make an offer on a home, in paragraph 5b), there is a place for the buyer to indicate whether or not they do or do not need to sell an existing property in order to buy the property they are making an offer on.

If the buyer indicates on the offer that they need to sell their property first - - and then they can’t, can they terminate the offer and get their earnest money deposit back?

No. They cannot. It is spelled out later on in paragraph 5b, and also in paragraph 4c).

So if paragraph 5b) does not create a contingency for the buyer to get their deposit back, why is it in the contract? It’s there primarily to enable the seller to better assess the strength of the buyer’s offer. It adds some transparency to the offer.

To avoid losing their earnest money deposit, the buyer should try to sell their home before the end of the due diligence period, or at least be reasonably sure they can sell their existing home before the settlement date.

If they can’t, the buyer would be in breach of contract and the seller could terminate and collect the earnest money as a remedy.

Now having said all that, if both the buyer and seller want to make the offer contingent on the sale of the home, they still can. They just need to get an attorney to draft a custom addendum to supplement the standard form 2-T.