34 names on a commercial buyer list. Maybe five are real.

Four is enough to close a deal, and it is not enough to build a business. Both of those hold at once, so I wouldn't treat it as either or. Deepen the four now because you have 10 days. Widen later on the specific asset types those four buy, since the deed search you already know how to run gets much better when you're looking for the second and third buyer of a known type rather than everyone.

Also, deed and price data isn't public in every state, so whatever you built in those three counties may not port.

The 8.1 he walked from. Was it 8.1 on collected income or on the rent roll? Because on 22 units in most of the markets I manage in, the gap between those two is real, and if you handed him a rent roll based cap he priced it at maybe 7.5 in five minutes and stopped returning your calls. Rent to income questions from him say he was checking whether the rents were collectible, which is exactly what someone does when they think your income number is soft.

Ask your four what lender they actually used on their last closing and at what coverage requirement. Not who they say they can use. The buyer's debt sets his ceiling, and if his lender is at a 1.25 coverage on a stressed rate, his maximum price may be well below his stated cap target on the same building. Confirm any specific terms with the lender in writing rather than taking the buyer's memory of them, since terms move.

The mechanism behind what @lantern described is worth being precise about, because it's the thing that separates commercial wholesaling from the residential version.

On a house, the end buyer and you are both reading the same comparable sales. Disagreement is narrow. On income property, price is derived from NOI, and NOI is derived from assumptions the buyer controls. Expense ratio, reserves per unit, management fee, vacancy and credit loss, and the treatment of any non-recurring income. Two competent underwriters on the same 22 unit building can land 15 percent apart without either being wrong. That spread is where your assignment fee lives or dies, so your job on the buyer side is to learn each buyer's assumptions well enough to underwrite as they do before you tie anything up.

On the widen versus deepen question, the answer depends on which constraint is actually binding. If you've had deals you couldn't place, you have a buyer problem and should widen. If you've had buyers waiting and nothing to send, you have a sourcing problem and the list isn't your bottleneck. From your post you have a broker offering first look and one property under LOI, which points at needing buyers you can underwrite for rather than more names.

One caution on the 10 day LOI. A letter of intent may be non-binding as to the sale and still create binding obligations, exclusivity and confidentiality being common ones, depending on how it's drafted and how your state treats it. Have a local commercial attorney read it before you rely on either reading.