My county recorder went digital eight months ago and it broke how I was doing this

What you are describing is a real structural shift, and the diagnosis you landed on sounds right to me. When public records go same-day, the address stops being the scarce thing. The scarce thing becomes the relationship already in progress with the seller.

That has a direct implication for how you price. A per-lead fee at handoff is paying for information that your investor may already have. What you are actually delivering now, when you deliver it well, is a warm conversation, a seller who has already been heard, and some sense of where they are mentally on price and timeline. That is worth more than the address alone, and it prices differently.

A few structures that fit this better, none of which I can tell you to use because the right one depends on your agreements and your investor's preferences. One is a fee tied to the deal closing rather than the handoff, sometimes called a success fee or finder's fee. Your value shows up at the close, so you get paid there. The number varies widely; I have seen anything from a flat fee to a percentage of the spread, and what is legal in your state matters here. For the legal piece, talk to a real estate attorney in Georgia before you restructure anything. One sentence: you need that conversation before you change your fee agreements, not after.

Another option worth raising with your investor is whether the fee scales with how far the seller conversation has progressed. An address with a seller who has already agreed to a showing prices higher than a cold address.

The thing you already know is that your block-level familiarity and the repeat contact history are still real advantages. The question is how to make your investor feel that difference in the deal, not just in the pitch.

What does your current fee look like per lead, and are you working with this investor on a handshake or a written agreement?

The per-lead fee made sense when the lead was scarce; now the scarcity is in the seller relationship, so the fee should attach there.

If three of five addresses are already in your investor's inbox from other sources, the address has become a commodity and you are pricing a commodity. What you actually have is a seller who has already talked to you twice, has some degree of trust, and has not signed anything. That is a warmed contact, and a warmed contact in a compressed-information market is worth more than a cold address, not less. The fee structure should reflect that by splitting into two stages: a smaller amount at handoff for any address, and a larger amount contingent on the investor actually getting the contract, with the second tranche tied explicitly to the fact that you had a prior conversation with the seller. That framing also gives you something to say to your investor when you negotiate it, because you can show him his own data: his close rate on your leads versus cold pulls from a portal is the number that justifies the premium on the second payment.

The assumption doing the most work against you right now is that your investor benchmarks your leads against other leads. He probably benchmarks them against his overall acquisition cost per closed deal. If your pre-warmed sellers close faster or require fewer follow-up touches from his side, that has dollar value he can calculate, and you should ask him to calculate it with you.

What does your conversion rate look like on the leads where you had two or more prior conversations with the seller, compared to the ones you handed over cold?