Structuring pay for a wholesaling service deal: per-deal fee or retainer on a 20-door target
Consider a wholesaler moving from assigning on their own account to getting paid for sourcing itself, working with a fund that wants 20 acquisitions in twelve months inside a defined box. If the sourcing operation runs direct mail and skip data at roughly 2,800 dollars a month plus one caller near 1,400 a month, and that produces around 31 signed contracts and 19 closings a year, the hard cost lands near 1,900 dollars per signed contract and roughly 3,100 per closing before paying the operator at all. Two structures are typically on the table. A per-closing fee, say 7,500 dollars with no retainer, ties everything to the buyer's own close rate. If that buyer kills more deals at inspection than a typical cash buyer would, the sourcing side eats the marketing cost on every one that falls through. A retainer plus a smaller per-close fee, say 6,000 a month plus 3,000 per close, trades worse economics if the target is hit for much better protection if it isn't, at the cost of capping upside in a strong year. Two questions sit underneath either structure. Acting as a paid finder rather than a principal on the contract can shift licensing exposure depending on the state, which is worth a direct conversation with an attorney before signing anything. And if the operator keeps working their own account outside the client's box, the fee agreement should say so explicitly, so nobody can later argue the best deals were quietly kept for the operator's own account. A performance kicker above a set closing threshold, paired with a clearly defined kill fee for properties the client walks away from after real sourcing cost was already spent, tends to keep both sides aligned.
