The floor plan is killing luxury wholesale deals before the assignment fee ever comes up
A distressed estate at 1.4M sounds like a margin problem until you walk the building and find out the floor plate cannot support what any rational buyer at that price wants to do with it. The assumption driving most of these deals is that a luxury buyer absorbs quirky layouts or load-bearing walls in the wrong place because they have the renovation budget. That assumption breaks down fast when the buyer is a developer rather than an owner-occupant, and at this price point the buyer pool skews developer more than most wholesalers expect. A 7,000 square foot house with four bearing walls cutting through what should be open living space, or a wing that was added without permits and cannot be legally converted, changes the after-repair value calculation by more than the assignment fee in most cases. The unpermitted square footage is the specific problem worth naming: an appraiser working for a jumbo lender will not count it, the buyer's attorney will find it in the permit record before closing, and the spread between what the seller accepted and what a developer will pay collapses the moment someone pulls the municipal file. What the room seems to skip is that the physical constraint sets the ceiling on the fee before any negotiation happens, and walking the property with that question in mind changes which contracts are worth pursuing. What does the floor plate actually allow, and does the permit history confirm it? Has anyone here made checking the permit record a condition of pursuing a luxury contract at all, or does that step happen after the assignment is already signed?
