Sourcing agreement has a fee at close and an assignment clause in the same document

The structural point is that there are two different economics in that document and only one of them is disclosed to the client in plain numbers.

A fee-for-service acquisition arrangement means the client pays a stated amount and the provider's compensation is that amount. A principal wholesale means the provider controls a contract and earns the difference between what they contracted at and what the buyer pays. Both are ordinary. Stacking them on one property without the client seeing both numbers is where complaints come from, and whether a given stack is permissible, and whether the activity triggers a real estate license at all, depends on the statute in the state where the property sits. Several states have added disclosure or licensing requirements for wholesaling in recent years, so your friend's attorney in that state should read clause 9 before signing.

On the mechanics of your two options: a strike of clause 9 is cleaner to enforce because it removes the entity's right to hold a contract at all. A cap is harder to police because your friend would need visibility into the settlement statement of a transaction they are not a party to. If you keep the cap, add a right to receive the fully executed purchase contract and the seller-side settlement statement as a condition of paying the closing fee. That converts an honesty question into a document question.

On clause 12, an undefined "presented" plus twelve months is a tail that survives the relationship. Define it as a dated written list and let the tail run shorter than the term of the agreement plus a short window.

All of this rests on the two same-day resales you found being the same operator rather than a coincidence of the deed record.

Clause 12 is the expensive one and everyone stares at clause 9 instead.

Twelve months, no definition, and no carve-out for properties the client already had in a pipeline. I have seen a version of that produce an invoice on a house the buyer found through their own agent four months after the term expired. It settled for a partial payment, which means it worked, which means they'll keep doing it.

Add two sentences. One: presented means a specific parcel identified in writing by the company on a dated list. Two: the tail does not apply to any property the client can show they had under review before the presentation date, and a saved search or an email thread is enough evidence. Also check whether the county your friend is buying in publishes sale prices at all, because roughly a dozen states are non-disclosure and your same-day resale check won't work there.

Sorry, basic one. Why would a buyer ever pay a fee to someone who is also making a spread? Wouldn't you just refuse? Or does the buyer usually not know the spread exists?

@rigging mostly the second one, from what I can tell reading these.

The part I'm chewing on from the service side is what makes the $2,500 upfront defensible in the first place. If it's paying for search labor before anything closes, fine, that's real work. But then it should come with a deliverable, so many underwritten properties a month or a written report, and this draft doesn't say. @wren does the agreement define anything the client gets for the retainer if nothing ever closes?