By Gren · September 18, 2026
There is one question that decides whether a Nebraska wholesale deal is clean, and it is not about disclosures.
How did you find your end buyer?
Answer that honestly and everything else follows. Nebraska has no wholesaler disclosure statute — no prescribed form, no cooling-off period, no registration, no notice you have to hand the seller. What it has instead is a license line drawn through the middle of your marketing, and a Supreme Court that has already shown what happens when you cross it.
The rule
Neb. Rev. Stat. §81-885.02(2) says that acting as a broker or salesperson includes publicly marketing for sale an equitable interest in a real property purchase contract, between an owner and a prospective buyer.
That is it. That is the whole regime. Publicly marketing your contract position is brokerage. Brokerage requires a Nebraska license. There is no frequency threshold — no "two a year and then you need one." One public post counts.
What "publicly marketing" covers, in practice:
- your website and your social media
- email blasts and text blasts
- investor marketplaces and listing platforms
- signs, flyers, anything you hand to strangers
What it does not cover is a private conversation with a buyer you already know. The statute is aimed at broadcasting, not at selling.
Notice what is absent here. Nebraska does not care whether you disclosed your equitable interest. It does not care whether the seller had three days to think about it. Those are other states' rules, and importing them into a Nebraska file tells anyone reading that you used a national template. Nebraska cares about one thing: did you advertise something you did not own, without a license.
The one carve-out: vacant lots
Since LB 187 (2025), approved March 11, 2025, §81-885.02(2) carries an exception for vacant lots. Publicly marketing an equitable interest in a vacant-lot contract is not brokerage.
That sits alongside the Real Estate Commission's Policy and Interpretation #42, amended in August 2024, which had already taken the position that optioning contracts for unimproved lots is not marketing an equitable interest.
Land wholesalers in Nebraska got a real accommodation here. Everyone else did not. And the carve-out is narrow on its face — a vacant lot is a vacant lot, not a tear-down with a slab on it. If you are close to the line, you are on the wrong side of it.
Enforcement: the order comes first, then the meter starts
This is where the popular summaries mislead people, and the difference is worth thousands of dollars.
Under §81-885.03, the director may issue a cease-and-desist order against unlicensed activity. The order becomes final ten days after issuance unless you request a hearing. Violating a final order brings a fine of $1,000 per day, or all commissions earned, whichever is greater.
Read the sequence. The $1,000 per day does not attach to unlicensed marketing on day one. It attaches to defying an order about it. The practical consequence is that the ten-day window is the most valuable thing in the statute: it is your chance to request a hearing, or to stop, before the meter ever starts.
People who treat a cease-and-desist letter as an opening negotiation find out what the second half of that sentence means.
If you are licensed, you sit under §81-885.10 instead: discipline up to the greater of $5,000 or the commission earned per transaction, plus suspension or revocation. A license does not lower your exposure. It changes which statute owns you.
Choice Homes v. Donner: the case you should actually read
Choice Homes, LLC v. Donner, 311 Neb. 835, 976 N.W.2d 187 (2022).
An unlicensed flipper went to court for its compensation and came away with nothing. The License Act barred the claims. The company argued it was an owner — it had held equitable title, briefly — and the court held that the owner exception did not cover brokerage acts done outside its period of ownership.
Sit with that for a second. The theory that a short stint holding equitable title converts you into an owner for everything you did around the deal is exactly the theory a lot of wholesaling education is built on. Nebraska's Supreme Court rejected it, and the remedy was not a fine. It was that a company that had done the work could not collect.
That is the real risk profile in Nebraska. Not a penalty you pay. A fee you never see, with a buyer and a seller who now know you cannot sue them.
If you want to market publicly
Two legitimate routes.
Get licensed. Then your file should contain the Commission's wholesaling Agency Disclosure form and its Assignable Contract Addendum. Use the current versions off the Commission's site.
Work through a licensed broker, who acts as your listing agent for the contract interest, using those same Commission forms. This is the underused option. If you do two deals a year in Nebraska, paying a broker to carry the marketing is cheaper than a license and dramatically cheaper than a cease-and-desist.
One adjacent change to know: as of July 1, 2025, LB 187 requires licensees representing buyers to have written buyer-representation agreements. If a licensee is working your buyer side, that paper needs to exist.
If you do not want a license
Three paths that stay inside the line.
- Private buyers only. Pre-existing relationships, direct outreach, no broadcast. Keep records of how each buyer came to you, because "how did you find your buyer" is the question that gets asked.
- Double close. Take title, then market as an owner. Make sure the first deed actually recorded and funded — Choice Homes is precisely about how thin a claim to ownership can get.
- Vacant lots. Exempt, per LB 187 and P&I #42.
Corrections to what is circulating
- The vacant-lot exception is not from 2022. It came from LB 187 (2025) and, before that, the Commission's P&I #42 in August 2024. Plenty of write-ups credit LB 892 (2022) with it. LB 892 added the equitable-interest marketing rule; §81-885.02(2) was amended again in 2025.
- The $1,000 per day is misstated everywhere. It follows violation of a cease-and-desist order. It is not a direct penalty for unlicensed activity.
- The licensee fine is not "$5,000 per complaint." It is the greater of $5,000 or the commission earned, per transaction.
- Choice Homes gets described loosely. It was a flip with a brief closing, decided on whether the owner exception applied. It was not an option-solicitation case, and summaries that present it that way are describing a different dispute.
One open item, stated plainly: we could not verify LB 892's operative date or LB 187's general effective date for §81-885.02. The rule and the carve-out are solid. The exact day each switched on is not something we will assert.
The short version
No disclosure regime. No registration. One line, and it runs through your marketing. Advertise an equitable interest in anything other than a vacant lot without a license and you are brokering. If you cannot market, your buyers list is your whole business — build it before you need it, and run your numbers with the free MAO calculator so the deals you bring it are worth the call.
Cut the noise. Catch the signal.
— Gren
This is general information about Nebraska law as of September 2026, not legal advice. Statutes change and facts differ. Before you rely on any of it for a specific deal, talk to a Nebraska real estate attorney. Citations: Neb. Rev. Stat. §81-885.02(2); Neb. Rev. Stat. §81-885.03; Choice Homes, LLC v. Donner, 311 Neb. 835, 976 N.W.2d 187 (2022); NREC Policy & Interpretation #42.