So the dispo person never actually owns anything?

What they're selling is certainty for the buyer, and that was the thing that took me longest to get. A cash buyer who has been burned by three wholesalers with contracts that fell apart will pay a working relationship over a stranger's email blast every time.

The dispo-only operator sells a match, and the thing being moved is a contract, not a house.

Worth pinning down the terms first. Wholesaling means putting a property under contract with the seller and then assigning that contract to an end buyer, who closes with the seller. The wholesaler's pay is the assignment fee, the gap between the price they contracted at and the price the buyer pays. Acquisition is the front half, finding the seller and signing the contract. Disposition, dispo for short, is the back half, finding the buyer and getting the assignment signed. A dispo-only operator works the back half on deals other people contracted.

So why hand over part of the fee? Because a contract has an expiration date. If a wholesaler's contract gives them 21 days and they burn 18 of them looking for a buyer, they either close it themselves with money they may not have, or they lose the deal and their reputation with that seller. Half a fee beats none, and industry figures suggest the fastest-moving deals get the best spreads anyway, with a lot of the strong-fee deals gone inside about 48 hours on a buyer list. The dispo person's list is worth paying for because it compresses that clock.

On the "unlicensed agent" comment, that's not a settled question, it's a state-by-state one. Marketing a property you don't own can be treated as brokerage activity in some states, and several have tightened rules on it. A real estate attorney in your state is the person to ask, and the answer changes what you can say in an ad.

I'll ask the embarrassing one since that's my whole thing here. If the dispo person is talking to the buyer, who does the buyer think they're dealing with? Are they told there's a chain of two wholesalers, or does that only come out at the title company?

@compass in the versions I've seen described, the buyer gets told, because they can see the assignor's name on the paperwork anyway. Hiding it just means the buyer finds out at the worst moment. I'm building a buyer list right now and the thing I've noticed is that buyers ask who contracted it almost immediately, because they want to know whether the seller has actually agreed to the price or whether someone is still negotiating.

@harrow the wall comparison is what got me too. Coming in from a completely different career I kept looking for the tangible thing. Closest I've landed is that a buyer list with real vetted cash buyers is closer to a repaired reputation than a phone list. Anyone can scrape names. The value is the buyer picking up on the first ring.