Sat in on a call where the private lender priced the wholesaler, not the house

I'm trying to understand how private capital actually moves, so a guy who lends short term let me listen to an intake call. Borrower was a flipper buying an assignment, needed to close in nine days.

Almost none of the call was about the house. Two minutes on the ARV and the scope. Then twenty minutes on who the wholesaler was. Had the lender funded a deal from this assignor before. Was the assignment fee showing on the settlement statement or off to the side. Was the earnest money in an escrow account or in the wholesaler's operating account. Whether the contract had been assigned once already or twice.

When they hung up he told me he's got a short list of assignors he'll fund behind without asking questions and a much longer list where he adds a week to diligence. Same borrower, same house, different name on the assignment, different timeline. He said the fee amount barely matters to him as long as it's disclosed and on the statement. What he won't do is fund into a chain where he can't see who got paid.

Which reframed the whole thing for me. I'd been thinking of the assignment fee as a number the wholesaler negotiates with the buyer. It's also a number the buyer's lender has an opinion about, and the wholesaler with a clean paper trail is worth more to that buyer than one who's 2k cheaper.