Signed the option on a $312,000 house in Greensboro last Thursday and my investor called me at 6am this morning to say he is only half in.

The promissory note route is cleaner if you can make the numbers work on the back end, but I would be careful about one thing: if the deal falls apart before you collect an assignment fee, that note is unsecured against anything real. The co-investor has no recorded position, no claim on the memorandum, nothing. I did a similar split on a smaller option in Concord about two years ago, $6,000 total fee, brought in a friend for half, and I papered it as a JV addendum to the option agreement rather than a note, specifically because he wanted something that tied to the asset and not just my promise to pay. It added maybe three days and a paralegal invoice of around $400 but it kept the relationship intact when closing ran long. The JV structure also lets you split the assignment fee at a defined ratio upfront so there is no negotiation later when money is actually on the table, and that conversation is a lot easier now than it is at closing. With your window closing March 28th you do not have much runway but you have enough if your attorney can turn a one-page addendum around Friday.

The JV-on-the-option path is the one I would avoid here because two names on a memorandum already recorded invites a conversation with the seller you do not want before March 28th. Promissory note backed by your assignment fee keeps them off the title chain entirely, but you need a default clause that spells out exactly what they get if your tenant-buyer walks before month 18 and the assignment never happens. I have been trying to structure lender positions on deals like this for eight months and the part that always bites me is nobody agrees on the waterfall until something goes wrong.

The thing nobody says out loud: if your co-investor is off the option entirely and you take a promissory note route, you are personally liable for that $7,800 repayment even if the tenant-buyer walks in month four and your assignment fee evaporates. I have seen that exact sequence burn a PM friend of mine in Charlotte in 2022, note was $9,500, deal cratered, she paid it back out of management fees over eight months.

If the deal is as clean as you are describing, a co-investor who will not sign onto a JV probably does not believe in the deal as much as you do, and that is worth sitting with before March 28th.

Promissory note against an assignment fee that doesn't exist yet rarely holds in Guilford County courts.

The thing that bit me on a similar split was that my co-investor got cold feet at month 14 and argued he had an equity stake in the underlying option because of how loosely we'd worded the original handshake. Cost me six weeks and about $4,200 in legal fees to get him off the position before I could move. So whichever structure you go with, the paper has to be airtight on one specific question: does this person have a claim on the option itself or only on the proceeds of your assignment. Those are two completely different animals legally and the difference matters the moment something goes sideways. If your attorney is unavailable, a real estate transactional attorney who handles creative finance in NC can usually turn a co-investor agreement in 48 hours for $300 to $500, which is cheap compared to what you're sitting on.

Keeping them off the option entirely sounds clean until the deal closes and they have zero recorded interest to enforce against.