Definition
An assignment of contract is the legal mechanism a wholesaler uses to transfer their rights and obligations under your purchase agreement to a different buyer, who then shows up at the closing table in their place. Your agreed sale price and terms are supposed to stay exactly the same; what changes is who actually signs the deed and wires the funds. This matters to you as a seller because the person you negotiated with may never be the one who closes, and you have limited ability to vet whoever they assign the contract to. Some contracts explicitly allow assignment, while others prohibit it or require your written consent before any transfer can happen. If you want more control over who ends up buying your home, this is a clause worth reading closely before you sign anything. Understanding assignment language up front can save you a confusing surprise a few weeks before closing. For the seller, the thing that matters is who actually shows up to close and whether the price and terms in your contract change. An assignable contract lets the original buyer transfer their purchase rights to another buyer, so if certainty matters to you, ask directly whether the buyer intends to close in their own name and with their own funds — and read what your contract says about assignment before you sign it.
Example
David signs a contract with a buyer named Buyer A for $225,000, spending an afternoon on the phone with him discussing the closing date and going over the home's quirks. Two weeks before closing, David gets a notice that the contract has been assigned to Buyer B, a company he's never heard of, for a $9,000 assignment fee paid by Buyer B to Buyer A. David's sale price stays $225,000, but he now has to trust an unfamiliar closer he never met during negotiations. He calls the title company to confirm Buyer B has actually funded the transaction and asks his real estate attorney to review the assignment paperwork before signing anything further. The closing ultimately goes through without issue, but David later says he wishes he'd added language requiring his written consent before any assignment, simply so he'd have known who he was really dealing with from the start. The seller in that situation asked one plain question before signing: are you buying this yourself, or will someone else be closing? Getting that answer in writing, alongside proof of funds, told her exactly what she was agreeing to rather than finding out days before closing.