A double close hides a spread that some counties publish for free anyway

Take a duplex, both sides rented, tired but no structural problems. Contract price 129,000 from a landlord ready to be done, end buyer at 152,000. That 23,000 spread can feel like too much to put in front of anyone, which pushes some operators toward a double close instead of an assignment, largely on the privacy argument. Run the actual cost of that choice against what an assignment would have cost instead: a second set of settlement charges around 2,200, transfer tax paid twice around 1,150, funding at 2 points on 132,000 plus a 995 doc fee plus several days of interest, roughly 3,900 all in, plus insurance and prorated utilities for the days of ownership around 480. That adds up to roughly 7,700 of cost that exists only because of the second closing. And the privacy often doesn't hold anyway. In a disclosure state, the seller can look the property up on the county site after the fact, see the resale price, and draw conclusions the wholesaler never got to explain. Roughly a dozen states don't publish sale prices at all, and the privacy argument only applies there. The fix: check whether the state is a disclosure state before paying for privacy that might not exist, and decide how to handle the fee conversation with the seller in advance rather than letting silence do it.