If the spread is small, is paying for two closings ever worth it?

Your 4,000 to 7,000 range is about right and the important thing about it is that it barely moves with price. So the question answers itself arithmetically. On a 10k spread you're giving up 40 to 70 percent of it, and on a 40k spread you're giving up 10 to 18 percent. Privacy is worth paying for when the number you're hiding is large enough to blow up the deal, and a 10k fee on a house almost never is.

Where that logic breaks is the licensing side, because that isn't priced in dollars. If your state treats marketing a contract as brokerage activity, the cost of the second closing stops being a privacy premium and starts being the cost of doing the deal at all. That's a question for an attorney in your state, not for me.

A couple of definitions, since you're reading in from outside.

An assignment sells your position in the purchase contract. You never own the house. Your fee is usually disclosed on the settlement statement, so the end buyer sees it.

A double close is two separate purchases. The seller sells to you, and you sell to your buyer, often the same day. Because you take title, your profit is the difference between the two prices rather than a stated fee, and neither party sees the other's number. Oklahoma is one state that requires profit disclosure even on a double close, so the privacy point is not universal, and about a dozen states do not publish sale prices at all, which changes how much privacy you were buying in the first place. Check what your state does before you pay for it.

Since you briefly own the property, you need money for the first closing. Short term money for exactly this purpose is usually called transactional funding. A variation sometimes called a simultaneous or dry close uses the end buyer's funds to cover both closings, so nothing new comes to the table, and whether a given title company or its insurer will do that varies by company and by state. Get the answer in writing from the closer who will actually handle your file.

On the licensing question you raised, taking title does change what you are doing in a legal sense, and in some states that matters a great deal. How it applies to you is a question for a licensed attorney where the property sits.

I voted for checking the state first, and I'd add a fourth thing to check that isn't in your post. Ask whether your state charges transfer tax on both legs. In some places you pay it twice on the same house in one afternoon, and that alone can decide it on a small spread.

Working through licensing coursework right now and the thing that surprised me is how much of the wholesaling conversation is really about the definition of brokerage in each state's statute. Two states can have almost identical language and enforce it completely differently. wren, your instinct to treat the licensing part as local is the right shape, I just wouldn't assume the cost side is local too. Funder minimums are pretty similar everywhere I've called.