[Villages Kahuna]

First, someone accurately pointed out that neither TV or its sales agents need to be shady or deceitful in selling houses. The Villages does sell itself. Generally, the protocol of earnest money, downpayment and then closing is exactly the process that tens of thousands of happy Villagers followed in buying their houses. You might not like the procedures set up by the developer, but demand by people who want to live here seems to have justified such a process for a long, long time.

As far as the "non-refundability" of earnest monies deposited by buyers "up north", the laws regarding real estate transactions are not necessarily in favor of the seller, even if they appear to be. If you check with your attorney, you will likely find that if a buyer defaults on a purchase agreement, his earnest money deposit does not automatically go to the seller. The money is typically held by the selling broker in a safekeeping account. Should a buyer default on a purchase contract what that does is permit the seller to litigate against the buyer for damages associated with the defaulted contract. That is why an offer to purchase real estate is called a "contract". It's ultimate settlement must be accomplished by the application of contract law. Such a contract is not just settled automatically.

Contract litigation and eventual adjudication takes a long time. More importantly, in order to have any of the buyer's earnest money deposit awarded to the seller, the seller has to prove to a judge that they incurred losses as the result of the buyer's default. Typically, the litigation never, ever gets to the point where a judge is required to adjudicate the matter. Almost always the seller and the defaulted buyer agree on some amount of "damages" which are typically a small proportion of the earnest money deposited.

So I wouldn't necessarily get my shorts in a knot trying to compare real estate purchase procedures in TV and what might be the custom and law up north. They're often not comparable. I guess that's why they call The Villages an incomparable place to live!