One sentence in a buyer's email is the difference between a paid lead and a dead one

Take a pre-foreclosure lead passed to a new buyer. Single family, 1,800 square feet, owner about eleven months behind, with two long conversations already had with her, in which she said she wanted to keep the house if there was any way to and sell if there wasn't. That gets passed along verbatim, along with her name and the filing date. A buyer's reply offering, say, 2,400 on close might include something like: go back and get her to sign the assignment paperwork, I'll email it over, then we'll talk about your fee. That is not a lead handoff. That is asking a bird dog to put a property under contract on someone else's behalf and get a homeowner's signature on documents they didn't write, don't understand, and aren't a party to. The entire basis for operating without a license in this space is passing information and never touching the transaction. Whether that specific act crosses a given state's licensing line is a question for a licensed attorney in that state, and needing to ask it is itself the answer. The right response is refusing to get signatures or discuss terms, offering instead to introduce the buyer to the seller directly and step out. A buyer who walks away over that boundary is telling you something useful. A better outcome often follows: the same lead goes to a different investor who works out a repayment arrangement with the servicer that lets the seller stay, with no purchase and no fee involved, followed by referral leads as a thank you. The rule worth keeping: never carry paperwork to a seller, and state that up front to any new buyer before there's money on the table to argue with. It costs some deals. It also means the answer is decided before the moment when someone might be tempted to bend it.