How Much Earnest Money Is Normal in Seattle?
Seattle earnest money typically runs 1–3% of the purchase price, with 5% deposits showing up in hot bidding wars. What's normal, and when more helps.
In the Seattle area, earnest money typically runs 1–3% of the purchase price — on an illustrative $800,000 home, that’s $8,000–$24,000. In competitive bidding wars, buyers sometimes go to 5% to signal seriousness, and in slower segments a flat amount around the 1% mark is common. The deposit isn’t extra money: it’s held in escrow and credited back to you at closing.
What the number signals
Earnest money is the seller’s measure of how committed you are. If you walk away from the contract without a contingency protecting you, the deposit is what the seller typically keeps. So a bigger check tells a seller, “I’m not going to flake” — which matters most in multiple-offer situations where the seller is comparing not just prices but the odds each buyer actually closes.
That’s the whole strategic logic:
- Slow market, one offer on the table: the low end of normal is fine. There’s no one to outbid.
- Competitive listing with an offer review date: the deposit becomes a tiebreaker. Between two similar offers, the one with double the earnest money and tighter contingencies often wins.
- You’re stretching on price but strong on cash: a larger deposit is a cheaper signal than another price escalation — it costs you nothing if you close.
The key thing to understand before sizing the check: your earnest money is only at risk in specific, predictable ways. As long as you terminate under a contingency you kept — inspection, financing, title, the Form 17 disclosure window — the deposit comes back. The mechanics, deadlines, and the ways buyers actually lose deposits are covered in our full guide to earnest money in Washington.
Where Seattle buyers get this wrong
Mistake one: treating the deposit as the risk dial. The contingencies are the risk dial. A 5% deposit with a solid inspection contingency is safer than a 1% deposit with everything waived. If you’re considering waiving the inspection contingency in a bidding war, that decision deserves far more attention than the deposit size.
Mistake two: offering more than you can park. The deposit is usually due within a few days of mutual acceptance, in wired or certified funds. If your cash is in investments that take a week to liquidate, size the deposit to what you can actually deliver on time — missing the deposit deadline is itself a default.
Mistake three: forgetting it’s part of your cash-to-close. Earnest money isn’t a fee on top of everything else; it’s an early installment of your down payment and closing costs. Budget it inside your total cash plan, not beside it — our step-by-step Seattle buying guide shows where it falls in the sequence.
Related questions
Is earnest money refundable in Washington? Yes, if you terminate under a contingency in your contract — inspection, financing, appraisal, title, or the seller-disclosure rescission window. It’s generally not refundable if you simply change your mind after contingencies are waived or expired.
Who holds the earnest money? A neutral third party — usually the escrow or title company named in the agreement, sometimes the listing brokerage’s trust account. Never the seller directly.
Can earnest money be more than 5%? It can be any amount the parties agree to, and Washington law caps the seller’s damages at 5% of the price when the contract uses the standard earnest-money-as-liquidated-damages approach. That cap is one reason deposits rarely exceed 5% here.
Earnest money strategy is exactly the kind of judgment you’re paying an agent for — so it’s worth knowing what that judgment costs. Greater Seattle agents publish their fees openly on Manaky Homes, free to compare. Get early access.
