I found my first flip buying off my own mail list and the numbers are holding so far

The 22k cosmetic budget is the number doing the most work here, and a single subcontractor surprise on a Warner Robins house that age can eat half of it before paint is ordered.

What year is the house, and have you pulled permits to see what's been touched?

The ARV spread is thin enough that your exit decision should be made before you pick up a hammer, not after 60 days of carry.

At 197k ARV, your all-in cost is roughly 138k purchase plus 22k rehab plus around 12k in financing and closing costs, call it 172k, leaving about 25k gross before your sale-side commission and transfer costs. If you list it yourself once licensed you recover the buy-side commission, but a 6 to 8 week licensing delay on a 90-day hard money note means you are renovating, listing, and closing inside the same window with almost no float. One permit delay or a slow buyer kills the margin.

The question nobody is asking about the Houston investor: if he bites, is he buying the contract for 8k or buying the finished property? Because those are completely different deals and you want to know which one before he responds, so you are not negotiating against yourself in a text thread.

Confirm with your hard money lender whether the note auto-extends and at what cost, because that changes the real worst-case math considerably. What does the contract say about your assignment rights?

The thing I have never seen work is sitting on an undecided exit while the clock is running. People say "I'll decide once I see what the investor says" and what actually happens is they wait ten days, the investor passes by text at 11pm, and now they're scrambling to list or assign under time pressure with a meter already at $1,400 burned. On a 90-day hard money term that's not theoretical, that's roughly where you'd be by the time you got an answer, got a contract signed on an assignment, and closed. The 8k assignment number is probably light for Warner Robins too, I've seen cosmetic flips with clean comps move for 12 to 15k in assignment fees in secondary Georgia markets when the numbers are tight enough that a rehabber can still make 30 on the back end.

What I'd actually do right now, before the Houston guy responds, is get on Facebook Marketplace and the local REI groups in Macon and Warner Robins, post the deal with the comp sheet tonight, and set a deadline of 72 hours for highest and best on the assignment. You are not being aggressive by doing that in parallel with waiting on your contact, you're just not letting one text thread control your carry costs. Also, you said your license clears in 6 to 8 weeks. Are you planning to list it yourself while you're mid-rehab, or after? Because that sequence matters a lot to whether the 90-day term is actually enough runway here.