The seller who agrees to price but needs six months before closing is worth more than the seller who wants out this week
A motivated seller who cannot close yet is the lead most bird dogs hand off too early or never hand off at all, and the fee structure almost never accounts for the difference. Take a seller carrying a note on a four-unit who has agreed verbally to a price but is waiting on a tenant to vacate, a lease to expire, or a family situation to resolve. The investor who gets that address today and closes in 180 days paid a lead fee priced as if closing happens in thirty. That gap is where the bird dog leaves real money behind. The assumption doing the most work in most fee agreements is that a lead has a single moment of value, and that moment is delivery. A seller with a timeline is a different asset from a seller with urgency, and the fee should reflect which one you are handing over. One way to handle it is a smaller delivery fee paired with a back-end payment tied to closing, regardless of when it happens, with a written agreement that sets no expiration on the close window. The risk to the investor is that the deal falls apart after months of carrying the relationship, so the delivery fee has to justify the early commitment. The risk to the bird dog is doing six months of unpaid follow-up to protect the back end. A middle structure is a flat delivery fee plus a close bonus that steps down after ninety days, so both sides have skin in the timeline. What I have not seen discussed is how bird dogs document the seller's stated timeline at delivery so there is no dispute later about whether the closing relationship was theirs to begin with. Do you have anything in writing at delivery that captures the seller's own words about when they can close, or does that conversation stay informal?
