Attorney struck the assignment clause, so we double closed and kept 141k
This is the first time I have funded the buy side of a luxury deal instead of just reading somebody else's package, so the numbers are the interesting part.
Property was a 5,900 square foot waterfront-adjacent estate, vacant 14 months, mold remediation needed in the lower level, owner in a slow family situation and represented by an attorney who did not want anything unusual on the paper. He struck assignment outright and said the buyer on the contract is the buyer at closing. Contract price 1.95M. Our end buyer, a repeat cash buyer who does two or three of these a year, was at 2.15M after seeing the remediation quote.
So we did back to back closings same day. Transactional funding for the A to B leg was 1.5 points plus fees, 31,400 all in. Two sets of closing costs instead of one, 18,200. State transfer tax hit twice on our side because of how our state treats the second deed, which is exactly the kind of thing that varies state to state and I only knew because our closing attorney flagged it early. Net to us was 141,300 on a 200k spread.
What nearly killed it: title turned up a second mortgage from 2011 with no recorded release. The lender that made it no longer exists in the same form and getting a release letter took 11 days of somebody on the title side making phone calls. We were 6 days from expiration when it landed.
What I would keep: paying the closing attorney to review the seller-side documents before we put money up, and refusing to fund until our end buyer's proof of funds was a bank letter we could call and verify rather than a screenshot.