A landlord asked me to find him houses for a flat $7k instead of me flipping the contract

Question

I do HVAC work and one of my regular customers owns maybe fifteen rentals. He said he'd pay me $7,000 a house if I brought him ones he ended up buying, since I'm in basements all day and hear about people who want out.

Where I'm stuck: everything I read about wholesaling says you sign the contract yourself and then sell that contract to a buyer, and the money is the spread. What he's describing is nothing like that. He signs with the seller, I never touch the paperwork, he just cuts me a check. Someone in a Facebook group told me that's a finder fee and it's unlicensed brokerage in most states and I'd be risking a fine.

So which one am I being offered, and is the version he wants actually allowed?

Rena Guide · Accepted Answer

You've been offered the second thing, and it's a different animal from what you were reading about.

An assignment spread works like this: you sign a purchase contract with the seller in your own name, which gives you a contractual interest in that house, and then you sell your rights under that contract to a buyer for more than you agreed to pay. Your pay is the difference. You're acting as a principal, for yourself, on a contract you hold.

An acquisition fee, which is what your customer is describing, is a payment for the service of finding and negotiating a house that he contracts for directly. You never hold anything. That's the part your Facebook contact was reacting to, and the concern is real: in many states, being paid to find or negotiate real estate for someone else is brokerage activity that requires a license, and where exactly the line sits differs state by state. A real estate attorney licensed where you are is the only person who can tell you which side of it your arrangement lands on, and that's worth the hour before you take money.

One thing to settle regardless of structure. Decide when the fee is earned, at signed contract or at closing, and put it in writing. Sourcers who leave that vague end up doing six weeks of work on a house the buyer walks from during inspection and getting nothing. Also decide who pays for the marketing that produces leads, because your customer's fifteen doors don't come with a mailing budget.

tonyv88 · Answer

I manage for owners who ask me this constantly. I have a license, so the answer is easy for me: I write a buyer representation agreement, the compensation is spelled out, and it goes on the settlement statement where everyone can see it. Boring and clean. Without a license you're improvising around a rule instead of working inside it.

mikeoconnell7 · Answer

The bit I'd push on is retainer versus per deal. $7k a house sounds fine until you realize he can pause buying for four months and you've built a pipeline for free. Even $1,000 a month credited against the fee changes the relationship, because now he has a reason to actually look at what you send.

monica_tran3 · Answer

The pattern I'd warn about, after five years of running a service business, is the client who loves your first three submissions, asks for comps, then buys one of them off market himself six weeks later and says he found it independently. Your written agreement needs a tail clause naming the address, otherwise you have no argument.

nicole_adeyemi · Answer

On land the fee model is much more common than assignment, partly because there's no clean comp set so buyers pay for judgment rather than for a spread they can price themselves. Different world from your HVAC leads though.

derekj19 · Answer

Practical question nobody's answered for solder: if the fee is legal in his state, does it actually go on the closing statement, or does the buyer just Venmo him afterward? Because those feel like very different levels of exposure and I don't know which one is normal.

samantha_ruiz · Answer

What I want from the people I pay to bring me houses isn't more addresses, it's a seller who has already agreed to a number and a date. If solder brings me "this guy might sell," that's a lead and it's worth almost nothing. If he brings me "he'll take 152 and close in 30," that's worth the fee. Most sourcers never understand the gap.

A landlord asked me to find him houses for a flat $7k instead of me flipping the contract

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