By Gren · September 18, 2026
Oregon stopped treating wholesaling as an unregulated corner of the market on July 1, 2025. Since that date you register with the state before you wholesale a house, you hand out a form the state wrote, and you wait three business days before anybody can be held to anything.
This one is not subtle and it is not optional. Here is how it actually works.
First: are you a wholesaler under the statute?
Oregon does not define wholesaling by what you call yourself. It defines it by a three-part test. You are doing "residential property wholesaling" when you market residential property and all of the following are true:
- you hold only an equitable interest or an option in it, not legal title;
- you have held that interest for fewer than 90 days; and
- you have invested less than $10,000 in improvements to the property.
Read that as a test you can fail into, not one you opt into. There is no deal-count threshold. One assignment is enough. If you signed a contract last Tuesday, put it on your buyers list on Thursday, and you have not spent five figures fixing the place, you are a residential property wholesaler in Oregon and every rule below applies to you.
The flip side is worth noting too. Hold past 90 days, or put real money into the property, and you are outside the definition — you are just a buyer who changed their mind. That is not a loophole to build a business on, but it explains why a genuine rehab never triggers this.
Registration, and who is excused from it
Nobody may wholesale residential property in Oregon without registering with the Oregon Real Estate Agency. Registration is for individuals, not entities — your LLC does not get a number, you do. There is a background check. The term expires June 30 every year, and you renew online and pay the fee, which runs up to $300.
Let the registration lapse and you are not a wholesaler with an overdue bill. You are unregistered. You stop wholesaling and you file a new application.
The exemptions are narrower than people assume:
- Licensed brokers and principal brokers under ORS 696.022 do not have to register — but they still have to give the disclosure. The license buys you out of the paperwork on the front end, not the paperwork on the deal.
- Attorneys, trustees, receivers, conservators and certain attorneys-in-fact are exempt.
That is the list. There is no exemption for doing one deal, for doing it with a partner, or for doing it "just for a friend."
The disclosure is a form, not a paragraph
This is where Oregon differs from the states that tell you what to communicate and leave the wording to you. Oregon tells you the content, the type size, and points you at its own standard form. Use the Agency's form. Do not write your own version and hope the substance carries you.
The disclosure has to be in at least 10-point bold type and it has to say that the wholesaler:
- is a residential property wholesaler;
- holds only an equitable interest and may not hold legal title;
- may not be a licensed real estate broker or appraiser.
It also has to define "equitable interest," state that the interest may be assigned for profit, spell out the three-business-day cancellation right, explain the remedies, and explain how to file a complaint with the Agency.
Who gets it: the seller and the end buyer, before each of them signs a contract, plus any licensee helping you market or buy. Three audiences, not one.
Sequencing matters more than most people bother with. The disclosure is dated before the contract. The contract is dated after the disclosure. Closing lands after the cancellation window has run. If your file reads in any other order, it reads badly.
Three business days, and the cliff if you skip the form
Once the disclosure is delivered, the seller or the buyer may cancel by written notice before midnight at the end of the third business day. The right cannot be waived — a clause in your contract saying otherwise is scrap. On cancellation, all earnest money and deposits go back.
Here is the part worth taping to your monitor. If you never gave the disclosure at all, there is no three-day window, because the window never started. The seller may terminate at any time, without penalty, and keep the earnest money.
So the downside of skipping the form is not a fine. It is a deal that stays cancellable straight through to closing, with your money on the table, at the seller's option. Every hour of work you put into a file like that belongs to somebody else.
Advertising: the disclosure travels with the marketing
The written disclosure has to appear in all advertising for the wholesaled property, in the same 10-point bold type. Not a link in the fine print on your contract — in the ad.
The Agency has said social media posts may instead link to the full disclosure, which is the practical accommodation for a platform where nobody can paste a full-page form. Take that as permission to link on social, not as permission to link everywhere.
What it costs to get this wrong
A knowing violation is a Class A misdemeanor. That is criminal, in a business most people treat as purely civil.
Civil penalties run $1,000 to $2,500 for a first offense and $2,500 to $5,000 after that. Unregistered, non-exempt wholesalers are also exposed to cease-and-desist orders and possible disgorgement of profits. There are reports that an unregistered wholesaler is barred from suing to enforce claims arising out of the wholesaling; we have not confirmed that one, so do not plan around it either way.
Corrections to what is circulating
A few things in the popular write-ups need fixing.
- The dates. The act was effective January 1, 2025, with the operative sections kicking in July 1, 2025. Summaries that give only one of those two dates are half-right and confusing about deals signed in the first half of 2025.
- The penalties are missing. Most versions skip the Class A misdemeanor entirely, and skip the $1,000–$5,000 civil penalty range with it. That is the single most important omission out there.
- The exemptions are missing. Attorneys and fiduciaries are exempt. Registration is individuals-only. Neither fact shows up in the common summaries.
- What they get right: the fee, the June 30 renewal, the 90-day and $10,000 test, the 10-point bold type, and the three-business-day cancellation. Those all check out against the act and the rules.
The short version
Register before you market. Use the Agency's form, in 10-point bold, to the seller, the buyer and any licensee involved. Date the disclosure before the contract. Let three business days run. Renew by June 30. Put the disclosure in your ads.
None of that saves a bad number. Run the deal first with the free MAO calculator, then paper it the way Oregon insists.
Cut the noise. Catch the signal.
— Gren
This is general information about Oregon 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 an Oregon real estate attorney. Citations: Or. Laws 2024, ch. 3 (HB 4058) §§2, 5, 8; OAR 863-017-0000 to -0025; ORS 696.022.