Is the assignment fee or a flat consulting-style fee the better ask at this price point?
After five years of running a service business, the thing I learned is that how you name the charge changes how people fight about it. Bringing that into this room because I'm seeing two structures used on high-end assignments and the room seems split.
Structure one, the plain assignment. Contract says you can assign, you assign to the end buyer for a stated fee, fee shows up on the settlement statement, everyone sees it. Clean, and the compliance story is simple, which matters when the transaction is large enough that a title company, two attorneys, and possibly a lender are all reading the file. Downside is that a $110k number sitting in plain view on a 1.5M deal invites a renegotiation from a buyer who decides you're overpaid for two phone calls.
Structure two, some version of a separate fee agreement with the buyer, paid outside the assignment or alongside it, framed as sourcing or acquisition work. People say it keeps the spread from being a target and it reads more like professional services, which at this level some buyers actually prefer. Others in this room have pointed out that anything that looks like papering around the assignment gets ugly fast, and depending on the state a separate agreement to find and negotiate a property for a buyer can wander into brokerage activity, which is a licensing question you'd need a state-specific answer on.
I don't have a settled view. The disclosure question and the licensing question point different directions depending on who your buyer is.
On a high-end assignment, which fee structure do you use?
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