Still sitting on 87k and every double close I underwrite falls apart at the spread

The friction cost on a double close is fairly predictable once you run it a few times: transactional funding plus two closings tends to land in the 6,000 to 9,000 range on residential deals in midwestern markets, sometimes higher if title has complications. That means a 17k or 22k gross spread is already thin before anyone moves the price. The assumption doing the most work in both your deals is that the end buyer's verbal holds. It didn't, and that's where the math broke.

The Dayton deal is instructive. Your end buyer pulling his own comps and walking the price down 5k is not bad luck, it's a negotiation that happened after you had already committed to the structure. If the double close is the plan, you need the end buyer's number confirmed harder than a verbal before you take a transactional funding quote seriously. A soft buyer verbal plus a two-closing cost stack is a margin compression event waiting to happen.

The risk you didn't mention is deal-specific, but it applies broadly in this structure: the lien the Akron title company found on day three means your due diligence window has to front-load title work. If you're paying for transactional funding during a title cure period, the clock is running against you. Some operators in this structure pay for a preliminary title search before they lock funding, precisely to avoid that.

On your core question, yes, the deals that close comfortably in this structure generally have spreads in the 25k to 40k range or higher, because the friction is mostly fixed rather than variable. Thinner markets compress that fast. Dayton and Akron are not impossible, but the volume of distressed inventory with that kind of spread is lower than in larger metros.

What's your current process for confirming buyer price before you commit to funding, and are you working with a buyer list or going out to find the end buyer after the seller contract is signed?

Dayton and Akron are both sub-100k markets and that is exactly where the structure punishes you hardest because the friction is flat not percentage-based. Guys I know doing this profitably are targeting spreads north of 28-30k, which usually means they are in the 140-220k ARV range where end buyers have more room to negotiate and still leave meat on the bone. The thing I would want to know before I kept running these: are your end buyers lining up before or after you lock the seller, because a verbal at 96k that slides to 91k on day four is a buyer who was never really in.

What's your average days-on-market before the end buyer goes cold on you?

Dayton and Akron end buyers in that price band are almost all landlords running their own CoC math, so they will pull comps and squeeze you every time. That is structural, not bad luck. The spreads that actually survive the friction in Ohio tend to start around 28 to 30k gross before you touch funding, and most of the deals I have seen close in that structure are in the 105 to 140k ARV range where the end buyer pool includes a few fix and flip guys who are not as disciplined about grinding the last dollar. Your 87k is fine but if you are underwriting in markets where seller floors and buyer ceilings are 20k apart you are basically funding a lot of due diligence for other people.

Skip the double close entirely and just assign the contract.