Do you tell the seller's attorney you're assigning before the contract is signed?

I'm mostly here for the paper side, so tell me if I'm off. Isn't the assignability language itself the disclosure? If the contract says the buyer may assign and the seller's attorney read it and signed it, the seller has been told. What am I missing that makes the verbal conversation separate?

vellum, the thing you're missing is the number. "Buyer may assign" doesn't tell the seller that the assignment is worth 140k. That's the part people get angry about, and the anger arrives at closing when they see the settlement statement or hear a figure from the buyer's side. Whether it's ever legally required to state the fee depends on the state and on how it's documented, which is an attorney question, but the practical blowup risk is about the size of the number, not the existence of the clause.

So the fee shows up on the closing statement? I assumed it was invisible.

rigging, on an assignment it's usually visible on the settlement statement, and how much shows and to whom varies by state and by title company. That's exactly why the surprise happens.

ember, I've done a lot of thin, fast deals at normal price points and I've been on the wrong end of the late reveal twice. Both times I got renegotiated. At 1.6M with a real attorney reading everything I'd say it early. Not the amount, the mechanism: I'm putting it under contract, I may bring a partner to close in my place, the contract is assignable, we can paper it either way. Attorneys don't mind being told how a deal is structured. They mind finding out.

There's a distinction worth being precise about. "I'm assigning" and "I may not be the party at the closing table" are different sentences to a seller, and the second one is the one the seller actually cares about because it goes to certainty of close. That's their whole question. They want to know if the money shows up on the date.

So I'd frame the disclosure around performance rather than around the fee. Show them what backs the deal, whether that's proof of funds from a partner, a larger deposit, or a shorter inspection window. If your answer to "are you the buyer" is followed by nothing that demonstrates you can close, the attorney is right to be suspicious of you, and he was.

sextant put it better than I would. I hit my ceiling around the 600k mark and the pattern was the same: the higher the price, the more the seller's side is buying certainty rather than price. I got a seller to accept a lower number because I disclosed everything and gave them a hard close date with a nonrefundable deposit after seven days.

At 1.6M I don't see how you dodge and survive it.

I've been reading for six months and this thread taught me more than the last three podcasts. Genuine question though: if you disclose the mechanism up front and the seller's attorney just strikes the assignment clause, what have you gained? You've told the truth and lost the option.

pike, you've gained knowing on day one instead of day 25. If they'll strike it, they were always going to strike it, and finding out early costs you a phone call instead of a deposit and three weeks of marketing to buyers you can no longer serve.

I've been stuck in analysis for a year so take my confidence for what it's worth, but the asymmetry there looks obvious to me.

What I keep circling is whether this niche fits anyone who isn't already known. Every version of the disclosure conversation in this thread works better if the attorney has heard your name or the seller was referred to you. ember, was this an off-market deal you sourced cold, or did somebody hand it to you? I think the right answer to your question changes a lot depending on that.

Sitting on the service side of the fence and trying to work out where I'd be useful in a deal like this. Reading it back, it sounds like the actual job is being the person the attorney doesn't have to worry about. That's a reputation product more than a marketing product.

I have a 1.1M file open right now where I disclosed the mechanism on the first call and it went fine, and a smaller one where I disclosed and the seller's son googled "wholesaler" and killed it in two hours. Same script, opposite results.

So I'd say the script matters less than who's in the room. If there's an adult child or an attorney involved, tell them everything, because they'll find out and they enjoy finding out. If it's an owner alone who wants it gone, plain language about the mechanism and a firm close date is enough.

Running a small service team, the thing I'd add is to keep one version of the truth. My people used to describe the same arrangement three different ways depending on who asked. That's what makes an attorney's antenna go up, not the assignment itself.

Write the two sentences you use, put them in your own file, and never improvise them on a call.

On the renovation end I only ever see these after the fee is done, and the pattern I notice is that the deals with the ugliest disclosure fights are the ones where the repair scope was soft. When the scope is tight and written, the end buyer doesn't care much what the middle party made, because their own math works. When the scope was a guess and the buyer discovers another 300k of structural work, suddenly the assignment fee is the thing they're furious about.

So the fee conversation gets easier the better your scope is, which is a strange but consistent connection. ember, get a real scope on that estate before you worry about the wording.