Memorandum of contract on every remote file, or only when the seller starts wobbling

I'd default to recording, and I'd say that mostly because the alternative depends on you reading a seller's mood correctly from a phone call. The version that works is the one that doesn't need you to be perceptive. You either put notice on record on every file, or you accept that some percentage of your contracts get resold out from under you behind your back and you find out at the worst moment.

What I'd change is the contract, not the habit. If your agreement has the seller acknowledge in writing that a memorandum may be recorded and consent to it, along with a release you deliver on termination, most of the objection your title agent raised turns into paperwork rather than a fight. She's not wrong that an unexplained memo from someone who isn't the owner looks like a defect she has to clear. She is looking at a document with no story attached to it.

The part I'd want a local attorney to confirm before I made it standard is what the county actually accepts, since recording requirements and what constitutes an improper encumbrance both vary state to state, and a memo drafted for one state's clerk gets rejected in the next. Halyard, if you're running two or three markets, that's two or three versions of the same one-page document, plus a release for each. Boring, and it takes an afternoon.

Halyard, do the counties you're looking at require the seller's notarized signature on the memo, or just yours?

Anchor's question is the one that decides this, because it determines whether the memo is a tool you control or a favor you have to ask for.

From where I sit looking at short-term funding, a recorded memo on the file is a mixed signal. I looked at a request last year to fund a same-day double close where the wholesaler had recorded a memo six weeks earlier and never released it, and the commitment came back with it listed as an exception. That is a phone call to the title officer, a release to sign and record, and a closing that moves. Nobody lost money, but the deal ran two days late and the end buyer got nervous, which is exactly the sort of thing that makes a funder price the next one higher.

So if you record, build the release into the same envelope as the memo and treat delivering it as part of terminating a contract, not something you get to the next week. The wholesalers whose files I'll look at fastest are the ones where the equitable interest is documented and the exit is documented too.

Whether recording it in a given state creates any exposure for you is a question for an attorney licensed there. I only see the downstream version, which is a title exception someone has to clear before my money moves.