Putting the assignment fee in the purchase contract cost me 15k

I do paper more than properties, and an operator I have worked with twice asked me to build the package on a distressed estate, 7,100 square feet, deceased owner, three siblings selling, one of them a retired accountant. Contract at 1.68M, end buyer lined up at 1.784M, assignment fee 104,000. My cut was 20 percent of the fee for drafting and running the closing coordination.

I wrote the fee into the purchase and sale agreement as a named line, with the buyer identified as our entity and successors or assigns, and a sentence saying the parties acknowledge the assignee may pay an assignment fee to the buyer which will appear on the settlement statement. The operator hated it. His view was that naming a six figure fee in front of three sellers with one accountant among them was inviting a renegotiation.

He was right that it invited one. Day 9 the accountant sibling emailed asking for the assignment agreement and the fee number in writing. We sent it. Two days of silence, then a call where they asked for 40k off the purchase price. We settled at 15k. Fee came out at 89,000 and closed on schedule 34 days after the contract date.

The reason I would write it the same way again is what did not happen. Nobody threatened to void anything at day 30, the seller-side attorney had no objection to raise because there was nothing he had not already seen, and the settlement statement matched the document everyone signed at the start. I have watched a deal die in week four over a fee number a seller discovered late, and 15k is a cheaper price than that.

What I would change: I would have had the conversation out loud at signing instead of letting a line item start it nine days later. Disclosure requirements on assignments differ by state and some now put specifics in statute, so the actual language belongs with an attorney licensed where the property sits.