How much should I charge as a wholesale assignment fee?

Ask ten wholesalers what to charge and you will hear the same anchors: $5,000 minimum, $10,000 standard, more if the deal is fat. Those anchors are fine as floors, but they answer the wrong question. Your fee is not a price you set. It is the slice of the spread left over after the seller's price and the buyer's numbers both work.

Start from the buyer's math

Your end buyer has a ceiling, usually an all-in cost at or below 70 percent of ARV. Example: ARV of $250,000 and a $40,000 rehab. The buyer's all-in ceiling is $175,000, so the most they will pay for the property is $135,000.

If you have it under contract at $122,000, the spread is $13,000, and that is your fee if you assign at their ceiling. If you contracted at $130,000, the identical deal only supports a $5,000 fee. The negotiation with the seller, not the invoice you send the buyer, is where the fee is actually made.

Typical ranges and what moves them

As rough anchors: $5,000 to $15,000 is the common range on typical single-family deals, and $10,000 is a widely used baseline. Fees of $20,000 to $50,000 or more happen on deeper-discount deals, higher price points, and small multifamily, where the spread genuinely supports them.

What earns a bigger fee is simple: a deeper discount from the seller. If you negotiated a price far below what any buyer on your list would pay, that extra margin is your work product, and you are entitled to price it. Buyer demand matters too. If three buyers want the contract, you can price close to their ceiling. If you are begging one buyer to look at it, you cannot.

Do not price the buyer out of their deal

A fee that pushes the buyer's all-in cost above their target does not make you more money; it makes the deal unsellable, and it burns the relationship you need for the next ten deals. Before you set the fee, sanity-check the buyer's exit. If they are flipping, run their side through a free fix and flip calculator and confirm their margin survives your fee. If they are holding, check that the rental cash flow still works at their all-in price.

A buyer who profits on your deals answers your next call. That is worth more than the last $2,000 on this one.

Defending the fee

Buyers push back on fees they can see but cannot justify. The defense is the underwriting: show the ARV comps, the rehab estimate, and the buyer's projected margin with your fee included. When the numbers show the buyer clearing their target, the fee stops being a negotiation and becomes a line item.

If the fee is large enough that showing it at all creates friction, that is a structural question, not a pricing one. See assignment vs double close for when to keep the spread private.

When to take less

Trim the fee when the alternative is losing the deal: a spread you misjudged, a rehab that came back heavier on inspection, or a buyer whose ceiling is real. A $4,000 fee that closes beats a $10,000 fee that dies.

Track your average fee across deals rather than maximizing any single one. Consistency and buyer trust compound. One squeezed deal does not.