Did the buyer accept your counter-offer, not verbally but signed, within the time period set forth in your counter offer? If he has a Realtor, the buyer would have given the deposit to his Realtor. Not sure about MN real estate practices but RE law is rather universal. I do not understand why the deposit was given to your Realtor and not his, as he is the buyer. The key is, did he sign the acceptance of your counter offer? If so, then he is in breach of contract and the deposit should be distributed to you at some point IF the Realtor actually collected the deposit. If the Realtor didn’t he/she knows they have a big problem.
“our realtor says we’ll never get the earnest money because it’s all just a theoretical thing everyone puts on paper but nobody ever gets because it usually costs more money persuing it than the amount of the money is.”
That is an extremely irresponsible thing for a Realtor to say to a client they are representing. It is not theoretical and I might add that a professional interested in fairness to their client would be advocating the release of the deposit to you.
no reply of any kind.(neither accepted or declined)