Whoever you have for a real estate agent sounds like an idiot. The
process should work like you think it does and there should be no
advantage to delaying giving the seller the inspection report until the
last day of the inspection period. Typically, there is an inspection
period with a deadline to give the seller the report. I've never seen
a contract where there is an advantage to delaying giving the report.
It's in both parties interest to get this resolved one way or the other
and the faster the better.

More importantly, with any decent contract, in no way should delivery
of the report mean that your deposit becomes non-refundable. If it
worked that way, you could bid on a house, find $100K worth of problems
during inspection, and if you then walked, you'd lose your $5K.

But then, you signed the contract, didn't you? Did you read it? Have
you read it now? Surely it has the answer to your question. BTW, this
is an example of why most people need a lawyer to help them before they
sign a contract like this.