Asked a wholesaler about the new registration rules, out came a binder

Notes and paper have had me confused for weeks, and someone at a local meetup told me to go talk to the guy in the corner because he'd been doing assignments since 2014 and would explain anything.

So I asked him how the whole legal picture has changed, expecting a rant. He put a three ring binder on the table. Tabs. One tab per state he touches, and inside each tab a printed copy of whatever the current rule is, dated, plus a one page note from his attorney about what he can and can't say in an ad. He said he pays for that page to be rewritten every year and it's the cheapest thing he buys.

He went through his marketing rule for me. He never advertises the house. He advertises that he has a contract available for assignment. He said the words differently three times to make sure I heard the difference. Apparently a couple of states now treat the public marketing of the property itself as brokerage activity, and he said he'd rather be boring than be the test case.

Then he said the thing that made me actually think. He said his competition dropped by maybe a third in two years and not one of them got in trouble. They just got tired of reading. He's the same operator he was, he just kept reading.

I came for note education and left thinking about compliance as a moat.