Do you put your fee in front of the seller in dollars, or keep it off the table?

Question

Two operators I trust do this opposite ways and both close consistently, so I want to see where this room lands.

One of them tells the seller the number. Signs the contract, then says plainly that they intend to assign it to a cash buyer and expect to make somewhere between five and fifteen thousand for doing so, and here's the paragraph in your contract that says I can. Their argument is that a seller who hears it at signing can't be surprised by it at closing, complaints go to zero, and if the fee can't survive being said out loud then the deal shouldn't exist. They also say sellers almost never care, because the seller is comparing your cash offer against a listing they've already decided not to do.

The other one discloses that they may assign, never volunteers the amount, and structures so the fee doesn't appear as a line the seller reads at closing. Their argument is that they're a principal, not an agent, they owe the seller a price and a closing date rather than a look at their books, and that naming a number invites a renegotiation the seller wouldn't otherwise have thought to attempt. They point out that no buyer of anything else announces their margin to the person selling to them.

What's actually required varies by state, several states changed their disclosure and registration rules in 2025, and an attorney where you operate is the only one who can tell you the floor. This is about what you do above the floor.

I've heard both arguments made well and I don't have a settled position.

marcus_hale41 · Accepted Answer

Everything I've read on the 2025 state changes points the same direction, toward more disclosure and less discretion, and Connecticut's registration and cancellation regime is the shape of it. So the second approach is defending ground that's shrinking, whatever its merits. I'd rather build the habit now than retrofit it when my state legislates.

tylerbrooks9 · Answer

I'd say the number, and my reason isn't ethics, it's that the alternative creates work later.

A seller who learns your fee for the first time at the closing table has one of two reactions. Either they don't care, which is the common outcome and means you gained nothing by hiding it. Or they care very much, and now you're renegotiating with an attorney present and a wire pending. The downside case is expensive and the upside case is nothing, which is a bad shape for a bet you take on every deal.

The second operator's argument about a principal not owing a look at their books is sound as far as it goes. But most sellers in this business are in some kind of pressure, probate or arrears or a house nobody has lived in, and the reason a fee surprises them is that they didn't think of you as a buyer at all. They thought of you as the person helping. That gap is where the complaints come from, and saying the number early closes it.

On the renegotiation risk, my experience is that a seller who'll reopen the price after hearing your fee was going to reopen it anyway when the neighbor's cousin told them what the house was worth. Hearing it at signing gives you the argument while you still have a due diligence window instead of a closing date.

What I won't do is put a range in writing that I then exceed by triple. If you say five to fifteen and the fee lands at forty because the buyer pool moved, you've created a worse problem than saying nothing.

renee_dubois · Answer

I've been on the seller side of one of these, sold a tired 4 unit to a wholesaler two years ago. He told me he'd assign it and didn't say the number. I found it at closing, it was $19,000, and I was annoyed for about a day and then not. What actually bothered me was that he'd been vague about the closing date twice. The fee I could rationalize. The dodging I couldn't.

Do you put your fee in front of the seller in dollars, or keep it off the table?

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