The choice between a double close and an assignment comes down to one number: what you pay a transactional lender versus what the hidden spread earns you. For Carly Stagge’s firm, Vertigo Real Estate Ventures, that trade took average wholesale fees from roughly $17,500 per deal to roughly $25,500 — about a 30% jump on the same leads, the same buyers, and the same contracts.
The mechanics matter, because the structure only pays for itself when the incremental fee clears the cost of the funding plus a second set of closing costs. And a new FinCEN disclosure requirement effective March 1 is pushing title companies away from the pass-through workaround that a lot of wholesalers have been relying on.
Below: the fee math, how transactional funding is priced and structured, why title companies are tightening up, the marketing side effect nobody talks about, and when assigning is still the right call.
Key takeaways
- Stagge’s firm saw average wholesale fees move from about $17,500 on assignments to about $25,500 on double closes, with California deals landing around $27,000–$28,000.
- Transactional funding for wholesalers is typically quoted at 1.5% to 2%; Stagge’s fund prices at roughly one point, meaning about $5,000 on a $500,000 purchase, with volume discounts.
- A double close hides the spread: the seller only sees the A-to-B settlement, the end buyer only sees the B-to-C, which removes the self-censoring that makes investors price deals cheaper to avoid showing a large assignment fee.
- A FinCEN requirement effective March 1 expands disclosure to sellers, not just end buyers, and title companies are increasingly refusing pass-through closings where the C buyer’s funds close the A-to-B side.
- On thin spreads the point plus a second set of closing costs can erase the gain — extra margin is best used to say yes to deals you’d otherwise pass on.
From the Investor Fuel Show
This article draws on an interview with Carly Stagge of Flip Fund (Flip Fund Capital) / Vertigo Real Estate Ventures on the Investor Fuel Show, hosted by Mike Hambright. Watch or listen to the full interview.
What Actually Changes Between an Assignment and a Double Close
Both structures start the same way: you have an A-to-B contract with the seller and a B-to-C contract with your end buyer. You are the B. The only question is whether you ever own the property.
Assignment. You sell your position in the A-to-B contract to the C buyer. You never take title. Your fee appears on the settlement statement, visible to both the seller and the end buyer. And because you are not the purchaser, you have limited standing to renegotiate once the deal is in motion. As Stagge puts it, if you’re assigning, you’re not technically the person who can negotiate.
Double close. You fund and close the A-to-B, take title, then immediately resell on the B-to-C. Two separate transactions. The seller sees only what you paid them. The end buyer sees only what they paid you. Neither side sees the spread, because from each side’s perspective there is no spread — there’s a purchase and there’s a sale.
Pass-through. The middle option, and the one that’s disappearing. You structure it as a double close, but the C buyer’s funds are used to close the A-to-B side simultaneously. Historically title companies were loose about this. Stagge says that after talking with title companies through the recent regulatory changes, a lot of them no longer want to touch pass-throughs at all — not because a specific rule bans them today, but because they don’t know what’s coming next and would rather stay ahead of it than backtrack into a lawsuit.
The practical consequence: if pass-through is off the table and you don’t have the cash to fund the A-to-B yourself, you’re back to assigning unless you bring in outside capital.
The Fee Math: What the Switch Was Worth Per Deal
Stagge ran the numbers on her own company as a case study. Three years ago Vertigo was doing about $1 million a year in wholesale fees. Today it’s about $9 million. Per deal, average assignment fees sat around $17,500. After the switch to double closing, they moved to roughly $25,500 — and that figure excludes California, where deals run closer to $27,000 to $28,000.
That’s roughly a 30% lift per deal on the same acquisition spend. No additional marketing, no new lead source, no change to how deals are bought or sold. She gives three reasons for it:
- Control of the paper. You’re the purchaser, not a contract holder hoping the assignment sticks.
- Renegotiation standing. Once you own it, adjusting price with the end buyer is a normal seller conversation rather than a request from a middleman.
- No visible fee, no self-censoring. This is the one most operators underestimate. When the assignment fee is printed on the statement, investors quietly price deals lower to avoid an uncomfortable number. Stagge is direct about it: if you already have a large fee and could have a larger one, you won’t push for it, because you don’t want it shown.
Read the 30% as one firm’s result, not a formula. Vertigo operates in Colorado, California, North Carolina and Florida, and part of that increase reflects market mix and three years of operational growth. But the per-deal jump she describes happened, in her words, pretty much overnight — the change in structure preceded the change in average fee.
It’s changing one little tweak to your process without changing how you’re buying and selling these deals, to clearly grow your profits by 30%. I can do the same amount of deals every year, I can still buy my deals the same way, I can still sell them to investors the same way.
— Carly Stagge, Vertigo Real Estate Ventures / Flip Fund Capital
How Transactional Funding Works and What It Costs
Transactional funding covers the A-to-B leg only. The lender wires 100% of your purchase price on closing day, you take title, and the B-to-C closing repays the loan the same day. In Stagge’s structure, closing costs and earnest money can also be covered when needed.
Pricing is quoted in points on the purchase price, not as an interest rate, because the money is out for hours. Stagge says most transactional lenders she’s seen come in at 1.5% to 2%. Her fund undercuts that at roughly one point, with volume discounts for repeat borrowers. On a $500,000 purchase, that’s about $5,000.
Some states require a day leg between the two closings rather than allowing them to happen simultaneously. Funders will generally carry the money a day or two to accommodate that — worth confirming before you write the contract, since county-level practice varies. Stagge notes that in Texas, each county behaves almost like its own state.
Run the comparison before you commit. The question is not whether one point is expensive in isolation. It’s whether the fee you can command with an invisible spread exceeds the fee you’d disclose, by more than the point plus the second set of closing costs. On the $500,000 example, you need roughly $5,000 of additional fee plus closing costs to break even. Against the $8,000 per-deal difference Stagge describes, that clears. On a $12,000 assignment fee attached to a $400,000 purchase, it might not.
Why Title Companies and New Disclosure Rules Are Forcing the Question
A FinCEN requirement effective March 1 expands disclosure obligations around cash purchases and buyers taking title in an LLC — which describes most wholesalers and most of their end buyers. Stagge’s read on the practical change: previously much of the paperwork and disclosure ran to the end buyer. Now the seller carries requirements too, so both sides of the transaction see more of what’s happening in the middle.
For an assignment, that means the fee is laid out in front of the seller as well as the buyer. For a pass-through, it means the seller learns their closing was funded by a third party who is buying the property from you the same day. Neither is illegal. Both invite questions from parties who didn’t understand the structure going in.
Hambright’s framing on why title companies react the way they do is worth internalizing: a title company is fundamentally an insurance business. In most states the premium is rate-regulated, so the company can’t price for extra risk the way an auto insurer charges a bad driver more. Its only real risk lever is declining the file. That’s why the response to regulatory uncertainty is “we won’t do that deal” rather than “that’ll cost more.”
One caution from Stagge that matters more than the rest: a title company signing off on your structure protects the title company. It does not automatically mean you are protected. Nothing here is legal advice — assignment rules, disclosure obligations and permissible structures vary by state, and you should be running your specific setup past your own attorney and your title partner.
The Overlooked Benefit: Your Name on the Public Record
Double closing puts you in the deed chain. Assigning does not. Stagge treats that as a marketing asset, and it’s the part of the argument most wholesalers have never priced.
She estimates one to two inbound calls a month that actually turn into something, purely from people who saw her name attached to a closed transaction and reached out to ask if she’s still buying. One example from her team: a colleague took a cold inbound call from someone who’d found him on a recorded deal, and it turned into a $30,000 fee on a property that sold in four hours. Had that original deal been assigned, the caller would have had no name to find.
The second use is credibility on the acquisition side. When she was heavy in production, Stagge would send prospects a list of properties she’d actually closed — eight deals last month, here they are, here’s my name on them. That’s a materially different conversation than listing addresses a seller can’t verify you had anything to do with.
Hambright adds a practical amplifier: buyer-tracking platforms pull from recorded transactions, so appearing on deeds gets you onto other wholesalers’ buyer lists automatically. Deal flow starts arriving without you asking for it — sometimes more than you want. The caveat is geography. In non-disclosure states like Texas, sale prices aren’t public, so the tracking behaves differently even though your name still appears in the chain.
When Double Closing Doesn’t Make Sense — and What to Add Next
The structure loses on thin spreads. One point on the purchase price plus a second full set of closing costs is a fixed drag, and on a deal where you were going to make $8,000 either way, it can eat most of the difference. Run the two settlement statements side by side before assuming the double close wins.
Hambright’s framing is the right way to use the extra margin: it doesn’t make every deal work, it lets you take deals you’d otherwise pass on because they looked too thin. You’ve already paid for the lead. Squeezing more out of the deals you already sourced is cheaper than buying more leads, and the money in this business gets made on base hits repeated consistently, not on the occasional home run.
The bigger tradeoff is identity. Stagge’s caution is against defining yourself as a wholesaler and nothing else — if wholesaling is your only exit, you’re only as good as your last transaction. Vertigo runs fix-and-flips, holds rentals, has a whole-tail and creative finance deals in progress, and launched the transactional fund as its next vertical. Her stated goal is making money four or five ways on a deal rather than one, with a title company and a hard money fund on the list of things she’d like to add.
Hambright’s line on this: the purpose of your business is to get you to the next business. Transactional funding is a good example — Vertigo needed it, built it for itself, and turned it into a revenue line serving other wholesalers nationwide.
Frequently asked questions
What does transactional funding actually cost per deal?
It’s quoted in points on the purchase price, not an interest rate, because the money is only out for hours. Carly Stagge says most transactional lenders in the market run 1.5% to 2%, while her fund prices around one point with discounts based on deal volume. On a $500,000 purchase that’s roughly $5,000.
Budget for a second set of closing costs on top of the point. Those two figures together are your break-even against the additional fee you expect to earn with an undisclosed spread.
Do I need my own money to double close a wholesale deal?
No. Transactional lenders fund 100% of the A-to-B purchase price and, in some cases, closing costs and earnest money as well. The loan is repaid out of the B-to-C closing the same day.
Lack of funds is the main reason wholesalers assign rather than double close, according to Stagge, which is precisely the gap same-day transactional funding is built to fill.
Will the seller or end buyer see how much I made on a double close?
Not directly. In a true double close there are two separate transactions with two separate settlement statements. The seller sees what you paid them; the end buyer sees what they paid you. Neither is a party to the other closing.
That differs from an assignment, where the fee is printed on the statement and visible to both sides. Note that public records may still show both transfers after recording, depending on whether you’re in a disclosure state.
Why are title companies refusing pass-through closings?
Because their only tool for managing risk is saying no. Title premiums are rate-regulated in most states, so a title company can’t charge more for a file it considers riskier the way another insurer would — it either takes the deal or declines it.
With the FinCEN disclosure requirement effective March 1 expanding what sellers and cash or LLC buyers must be told, Stagge reports that many title companies would rather get ahead of the change than untangle a pass-through later. Confirm with your own title partner and counsel before structuring a deal around one.
Is double closing worth it on a small spread?
Often not. One point on the purchase price plus a second set of closing costs is a fixed cost that can consume most of a modest fee. If the deal makes the same money either way, assigning is cheaper.
The better use of the structure is on deals where you believe the disclosed fee is capping what you’d charge, or on deals so thin you’d otherwise pass — the extra margin is what makes them workable.
The bottom line
Before your next closing, pull the last ten deals you assigned and rerun each one as a double close: add a point on the purchase price plus a second set of closing costs, then ask honestly what fee you would have charged if the number were never shown to anyone. That spread, deal by deal, is the entire decision.
