Home failed inspection.. miserably

[mrs.b]

Well, your realtor - if worth their salt - may be able to find you rental options from their list of sales. Quite a few people stuck in the housing market with a house they cannot sell consider that route if they're just asked. It gets them income on a home they may be carrying a mortgage on after closing on their desired home, and free staging. You may have to get creative to keep the dogs' damage under control and they may not like it as much (crating or dog house in the back), and you may have an extra deposit to front, but if you are able to keep it under control, deposits are returned. It can alleviate the stress of finding the perfect home on such a tight timetable.

As far as the realtor pushing to make the seller walk away, she could be trying to force the deal through. If the seller does decide to make the corrections or price reduction, you're committed or out the earnest money so she may think you'll go forward with the sale to avoid that loss. That's a commission check. Or, she may be privy to arguments by the seller and seller's realtor that they intend to try to keep the earnest money if you walk first, and she might be trying to save you the headache. If your contract definitely reads that you are able to walk based upon the housing inspection, push the issue with your realtor and see if you can get a measure of what her motivations are.

You'll find the right home! You will. When we bought our home, we were not in any rush and wanted to make absolutely certain we were not walking into a money pit. One thing our realtor suggested - and we did - was to write "Seller pays inspection fees" into the offer contract. She said it does somewhat weaken an offer, but it's a very strong indicator of whether or not a seller is up-front on their disclosures, and confident of the state of upkeep on a home if they're willing to fork in that cash. We made an offer on one home and the offer was rejected due to that clause, and we later found out it had severe structural issues. The seller of our current home agreed to the clause, paid the inspection, and the inspection turned up nothing that was not already disclosed. It gave us a lot of peace of mind about what we were walking into that the seller knew the state of the home and had that confidence.

Edited to Add:
Something else our realtor suggested and we did - not sure if it's normal or not? - is we called the utility companies for the homes we were interested in to find out the average winter and summer utility bills, and the averages for the homes on either side of the homes we were interested in. That gave a general idea of whether or not there were hidden issues (like insulation, old or poorly maintained HVAC, etc.) that an inspector may or may not be able to inspect or notice by comparing to the neighbors. We passed on quite a few homes based upon the utility cost. It can be skewed if the owners are running a lot of tech gadgets (I haven't compared us to our neighbors since we bought, but we'd likely fall into that category), but we preferred to err on the side of caution than buy a home and later discover the insulation the inspector could not see was non-existent, or the HVAC was on the verge of collapse before we ever put in an offer and had to risk earnest money. Most of the reps at the utility companies did it without much encouragement, and only a couple huffed. They can huff, though; it's a few seconds of their time to potentially save thousands and thousands for a buyer.