First deal I closed because somebody else's buyer answered the phone

The part I'd want to know is what happens if that guy's foundation buyer had passed too. You had 21 days and a $1,000 deposit out. Do you have a walk-away plan written into the Tuesday call, or is it just three people hoping one of them knows somebody?

$6,500 for the half you kept versus what, maybe $9,000 if you'd found the buyer yourself in week three at a worse price? That math is the whole argument for me. I've been trying to decide if I'm an acquisition person or a dispo person and this thread is making me think the answer is you pick one and trade for the other.

Step crack on a back corner on pier and beam in a 1958 house could be $4,000 or it could be $22,000 depending on whether the beams are gone. Did the buyer crawl it before he signed, or did he price the risk in at $151,000 and eat whatever he found? Asking because that's the difference between him coming back to you in two years and him coming back next week wanting a credit.

The addendum is the real story here. I had almost the same thing last year, seller's counsel treated the assignment like we were pulling something, and the fix was consent in writing plus showing them the buyer was funding cash. Five days is fast for that. Did you have to disclose the fee amount to the seller or just the fact of the assignment?

What did the Tuesday call cost you? Dues, a cut of everything, nothing?

Starting from nothing here so this may be dumb, but how did the three of you decide 50/50 before you knew what the fee was going to be? Seems like the person who found the buyer in 48 hours did less hours of work than you did getting the heir under contract, or maybe I have that backwards and the buyer relationship took him two years to build.

@ember I've been building a buyer list for five months and it is slow and boring and mostly people who say they buy and don't. So yes, the two years version. The guy with the pier and beam buyer probably has eleven people like that and only three of them ever answer.

@keystone did you get access to his buyer or just the one introduction on this deal? That's the thing I'd want pinned down before deal two.

Renovation side of this: the reason your flippers passed isn't the crack, it's that a visible crack means an unknown scope and they've all been burned. The buyer who took it has a crew who does that work at cost. That's not a better buyer, that's a different business. Worth understanding which of your buyers are pricing risk and which are pricing labor they already own, because it changes who you call first.

When you split a fee 50/50, does the title company cut two checks at closing, or does one of you get paid and then pay the other one afterward? I never actually knew, and the second version sounds like exactly how people get stiffed.