One agreement everyone signs, or a separate one per deal?

Your two arguments were both about assets that exist between deals, so per-deal paper can't reach them by definition. The list and the earnest money float are group property whether or not you've named them. That's an argument for the master document and it's the only clean one I see.

Renovation side gave me the counterargument though. Every master document I've signed with trade partners got treated as settled and then nobody read the deal sheet, and the deal sheet is where the actual scope lived. Six people who have been running on goodwill are going to sign your master agreement and then keep operating on goodwill, and the first time somebody points at clause 7 the goodwill is over anyway.

I'm still building a list so I'm outside this, but harrow's point about people not reading the deal sheet is the one I'd worry about most. A master agreement plus a lazy one pager is worse than a real per-deal agreement, because the one pager creates the feeling of documentation without the content.

We went master document with four people eighteen months ago and I'd do it again, with one change. Put the list ownership and the earnest money mechanics in the master and leave the split out of it entirely. Every split argument we had came from the master saying 50 and the deal not looking anything like a 50 deal.

On earnest money specifically, we run a pooled account that funds deposits and gets reimbursed at closing, and the master says the sourcing member eats the deposit if the contract dies for a reason on their side. That clause has been invoked twice, $1,000 and $2,500, and both times the person paid without a fight because they'd signed it before they had a stake in the answer. That's the whole value of writing it early. You're negotiating with people who don't yet know which side they'll be on.

quarry's split point is right and it's the thing I got wrong. Our four person arrangement fixed the referral rate at 30% in writing and I've turned down two deals I should have taken because 30 was wrong for them and renegotiating meant admitting the document was bad.

I'm at eleven deals now and the ceiling I keep hitting is dispo speed, not paper. So my honest position on your question is that neither version of the agreement fixes the thing that limits your fee count. What it fixes is the month you lose when something goes wrong. Eleven closings and two month-long arguments means you spent roughly two months of six people's attention on disputes. Price the master document against that and it's cheap even if it's imperfect.

I haven't closed anything yet, and the part I don't understand is why a new member would sign a master agreement written before they arrived. quarry says the value is negotiating before you know which side you'll be on, which makes sense for the founders. Person seven arrives and everyone already knows which side they're on, and the document was built by people whose deals it already fits.

rigging just said the thing that would keep me out of a group entirely. I'm starting from zero and every one of these arrangements looks like joining a business whose rules were set by people with more deals than me.

What I'd want is the master agreement to have a stated way to change it, some number of members who can amend, so it isn't a fixed inheritance. warrant, does either of your options include that. If option one is permanent and option two is nothing, there's a middle where the master exists and gets rewritten every year with everyone in the room.

Small portfolio here, so my scale experience is with property rather than deal flow, and the pattern I'd flag is that six people is the size where informal stops working and eight is the size where it's already broken. You're at the right moment.

The amendment provision ember asked about is the answer to rigging. Write the master, put a clause in it that says a two-thirds vote amends any term, and review it on a set date. Then the document holds the things that don't change, list ownership and earnest money and what happens when someone leaves, and the split lives in the deal sheet where quarry put it. That structure survives a member joining and a member leaving, which is more than either of your two options does on its own.

I've spent four months analyzing instead of doing, so I recognize what this thread is. You have eleven closed assignments and you're spending a month designing paper. thicket's version is good enough and further design won't improve it.

One substantive thing though. warrant, your worry about the master document reading as an entity or a securities arrangement is the only part of this that can actually hurt you, and it's the part six forum members can't resolve. The rest of it you can iterate on. That question you take to a lawyer in your state before anyone signs, and the answer changes what shape you can even choose from.