What would I be if a wholesaler used my landlord contacts as the buyer side?

Three hours for 10k sounds incredible until you said the part about your name. Is there any version where you introduce him to two people and take nothing, just to see how he behaves on a live deal?

The question to walk into the attorney's office with is narrow. Ask whether compensation contingent on procuring a buyer for a property you have no equitable interest in triggers the broker licensing statute in your state, and whether being a member of the JV entity that holds the contract changes that analysis. Those are two different questions and the answer to the second one is the reason a lot of these deals get papered as an LLC with both parties as members rather than a referral fee.

I'd also ask him to show you the JV agreement he uses now, before you tell him yes or no. How a person's paper treats the dead deal case tells you more about them than the split does. If his document is silent on who eats the earnest money and who talks to the seller when things go sideways, he hasn't had enough go sideways yet.

70/30 in his favor is wrong for what you're bringing. He has a stale list, which means he has a disposition problem, which means his contracts are worth a fraction of what he thinks without you. I'd open at 50/50 and expect to land at 60/40. The three hours framing is what's getting you, you're not selling three hours, you're selling the only thing that makes his 138k contract into money.

Does the roof number come from him or from someone who climbed on it? Two full turns plus a roof on a 1970s four unit is where I'd expect a 12k surprise, and thicket's buyer eats it, not the wholesaler.

kestrel is right to ask. On a 1970s four unit the roof is rarely the expensive part. If it's original galvanized supply lines or a shared 100 amp panel feeding four units, your turn cost doubles and nobody quotes that from the driveway. I'd want a walkthrough before your name goes on the forward.

The veto is the important half and I don't think it's a split question at all. Write it in that you review every property before it goes to anyone on your list, and that reviewing means you get inside. If he balks at that, the answer is no regardless of the percentage.

Run the buyer's side and see if 172 is even real. 138 plus roof at say 14 plus two turns at 12 each is 176 all in before holding, on a 1970s all one bed four unit. If your contact is buying at 172 they're paying 172 and then spending 26 to 30 on top, so they need the stabilized value well north of 210 for it to be worth doing. In a lot of small markets one bed units rent at a discount that caps the value cold.

So the question isn't your split, it's whether your one likely buyer is going to walk this and come back at 158. If they do, the spread goes from 34k to 20k and your 30 percent is 6k. That's the number you should be deciding against, since a first deal in a JV almost never closes at the pitched price.

If one buyer out of forty would probably buy it, that isn't a buyer list working, that's a single phone call. I'd want to know that before deciding what my list is worth.

Something here doesn't add up for me. Is the risk to your name really the deal falling apart, or is it that your people find out you got paid for the introduction and didn't say so? The second one seems worse and easier to fix.

juniper's put a finger on it. Disclose the fee to your buyers up front, every time, in writing in the same email as the deal. It costs you nothing with people who trust you and it removes the only thing that would actually damage the relationship. Some of them will still want a discount for knowing. That's fine, it's priced in.

sextant's 158 scenario is the one I'd underwrite to. At 6k the whole thing stops being interesting enough to risk anything on.

Small point from a low price point market. Forty contacts sounds like a lot until you need three of them at once. If you do this repeatedly, you burn the list at whatever rate his deal quality drops, and you don't control his deal quality. The veto wren described is the only lever, and it only works if you actually use it and say no to the second and third deal he sends.

I'd do one deal, at 50/50, with the walkthrough requirement in writing, and I'd tell him plainly that the second deal's terms depend entirely on how the first one closes. You lose nothing by saying that out loud, and if he needs an answer this week on a 70/30 with no diligence rights, you've learned the thing you needed to learn.