A syndicator offered me a 1.5% consulting fee on a $2.3M raise and I realized I had no idea if that was high or low.

The range you found, 0.75% to 2.1%, reflects how genuinely uncodified this space is. There is no standard fee schedule for real estate consulting the way there is for, say, a buyer's agent commission. What you are seeing is exactly what the market looks like: individual negotiations, often anchored to a previous deal, with almost no external reference point to push back against.

The way the number usually forms is one of three things. The operator pulls it from the last deal they structured. The consultant names a floor based on what their time is worth per hour and works backward from the raise size. Or someone in the room says "1.5% feels right" and nobody has a reason to object. That last one is more common than people admit, which is why your inherited-number instinct is probably correct more often than not.

The variables that should move the number are scope of involvement, what you are actually signing your credibility to, and whether you have an ongoing stake in the outcome or just a close-of-raise payment. Two calls a month plus a close deliverable sits closer to a light retainer than to a one-time review, so 1.5% is at least coherent for that scope, though whether it is fair to you depends on how much time you would actually spend and what your day rate works out to on that basis.

The slow answers on the end buyer situation were the more important signal. That part of your read sounds right to me, though I would say that is the kind of thing worth confirming with a real estate attorney if there are securities law questions about how the raise is structured.

What was the deliverable at close supposed to be, specifically? That changes how I would think about whether 1.5% was the right number for you.

The 1.5% probably started as a prior deal number, because most consulting fees in private capital raises do. The more useful question is what the fee is indexed to: whether it is a flat rate on the total raise target, paid only on capital actually closed, or tiered so that the last tranche costs more because it is the hardest to place. Those three structures price very differently on a $2.3M raise where the final $400k might take 60% of the effort.

What was the payment trigger in what they offered you, close of escrow or capital committed?