When a buyer wants to re-assign your assignment, who stays on the hook
Say a wholesaler is under contract at 142, assigns to a buyer at 159 for a 17k fee, and takes a standard one-page assignment with a non-refundable 5k deposit at signing. Then that buyer says he cannot close and wants to assign his position to a third party at 168, insisting it does not affect the original wholesaler because that person is already out. The part worth checking carefully: the wholesaler's name is still the buyer on the original purchase agreement with the seller. Whether the assignment to the second buyer released the wholesaler from that original contract depends entirely on the language of the assignment. A clause where the assignee assumes all obligations does not, by itself, release the assignor unless the seller's own agreement or a separate release says so. So the wholesaler can absolutely still be on the hook if the third party blows the closing, particularly with title scheduled in nine days and an anxious seller already watching the number of names climb. On the licensing question, a chain of two assignments on one contract inside twelve months is exactly the fact pattern that gets scrutinized in states that treat repeated assignment activity as brokerage requiring a license. That threshold and its exact triggers vary by state, so this is worth a quick call to counsel licensed in that state before title date, not after.
