An interesting trap/loophole that I discovered is that in Queensland, the real estate agent isn't obliged to release the deposit at settlement, but has up to 14 days from settlement to hand over the funds to the seller.
So let's say the deposit was $20K on a $200K purchase, we had a situation where the seller wasn't going to hand over title at settlement until they had all their $200K, and the real estate agent said they wouldn't release the $20K deposit in their trust fund at settlement, but would hand it over in 14 days.
Our lender, in order to secure the title, handed over $200K rather than $180K at settlement, then sent us a letter claiming we'd overdrawn our loan by $20K and insisting we take drastic and immediate action to get the real estate agent to hand over the deposit, and advising that they were charging us some outrageous overlimit fees every day that they didn't have the $20K.
I got the letter in my hospital bed, a few days after my twins had been born nearly 10 weeks premature by emergency C-section, so to this day I'm not sure why this all created such a kerfuffle, because apparently the 14 days to release the deposit is standard by legislation, and presumably the lender does settlements every day, and I've never had another one go wrong... but all these years later, I'm curious to know what this was about. Can anybody enlighten me?