An assignment off a default list paid 11k after title nearly forced a double close

The 9k settlement on a 38k second is the whole deal, and it came from someone else's negotiation. That's fine, it happened, but it isn't something to build a model on. A second position lender on a similar file has been known to refuse anything under 60 percent because the borrower had other assets and the lender knew it. Any read on why they cut it that hard, or did the attorney just come back with a number one day?

Seven months of list building for one assignment is a real answer to something I have been arguing with myself about, so thank you for the timeline. The part that sounds easy in your telling is finding a second closing attorney inside eight days who would do back to back on a file with an unresolved junior payoff. I have called five in my county and three of them will not touch a double close at all now. If your first title company had been your only option, does this deal exist? I think it does not, and that makes the fee look less like skill and more like you had a phone number nobody else had.

Your exit depended on the junior lienholder discounting, which is the variable to watch if you repeat this. A junior lien behind a first that is already near the property's as-repaired value has weak economics at a completed foreclosure sale, because in most states the sale proceeds pay the senior lien first and the junior can be left with nothing recoverable from the property itself. Whether the debt survives as a personal obligation, and whether pursuing it is worthwhile, depends on state law and on the borrower's circumstances, so that is an attorney question rather than a rule you can carry between deals.

What that means practically: the discount you got is a function of how thin the equity cushion was, not of your negotiation. Your 236 contract against 305 to 318 comps with 45k of work leaves a first-lien payoff at 191 comfortably covered, so the junior had less pressure on it than you might assume. Model the same deal with a 240k first and a 20k second and the second has almost no leverage, and the seller ends up with even less room.

On keystone's point, closing capacity is a real constraint and it moves. Assignment and double-close practice, and what a title company or closing attorney will underwrite, differ by state and by individual firm, so a working relationship with more than one closer is part of the infrastructure at this stage rather than a nice-to-have. Confirm in writing with each closer what they will and will not process before you contract.

One number to track going forward: your 7,100 in transactional funding and fees was 39 percent of the gross spread. At a 12k spread instead of 18k, that structure does not clear.