Missouri Wholesaling Law SB 973: Essential 2026 Guide

If you wholesale real estate in the greater St. Louis area, the way you sign contracts is about to change.

Missouri Senate Bill 973 adds a new section to state law, Section 407.3600, that requires anyone acting as a wholesaler on residential property to hand the property owner a written disclosure at least fourteen calendar days before a purchase contract gets signed. It takes effect August 28, 2026.

That is not a lot of runway. So let’s walk through what the Missouri wholesaling law actually says, what it does not say, and what you may want to think about between now and the end of the month.

One important note up front: this article is educational, not legal advice. We are local investors and lenders, not attorneys. Before you change how you paper a deal, talk to a real estate attorney who has read the full bill.

Watch the full conversation

Suzanne walked through the law with the Buyers Club community two days after it was signed, alongside local wholesalers working out what it means for their deals. About 55 minutes, with chapters if you want to jump straight to a specific question.

What is Missouri SB 973?

SB 973 is a broad real estate bill sponsored by Senator Curtis Trent. It touches several unrelated areas: delinquent property tax procedures, land bank authority, land tax collection, and public sewer districts.

Tucked inside it are two consumer protection sections that matter to investors:

Section 407.3600 creates disclosure requirements for real estate wholesalers.
Section 442.920 creates the Missouri Residential Sale Leaseback Protection Act, which puts a 14 day disclosure and a hard 30 day wait before title can transfer on sale leaseback deals.

The wholesaling piece is short. It is a small part of a much larger bill, which is exactly why a lot of investors did not see it coming.

When was SB 973 signed, and when does it take effect?

Governor Mike Kehoe signed SB 973 on July 13, 2026. It takes effect August 28, 2026.

If the timeline feels muddy, that is because there are three different dates floating around:

Milestone	Date
Truly agreed to and finally passed by the legislature	May 15, 2026
Delivered to the Governor	May 28, 2026
Signed by Governor Kehoe	July 13, 2026
Effective date	August 28, 2026

So when you hear someone say the wholesaling law “passed in May” and someone else say it “passed in July,” both are describing something real. The date that matters for your business is August 28.

Contracts you sign before that date are governed by the rules that exist today. The disclosure requirement applies going forward, and the bill states that its provisions cannot be waived or modified by agreement. Any portion of an agreement executed, modified, or extended after the effective date that tries to waive these provisions is null and void.

That last part is worth reading twice. You cannot contract your way around this.

Who counts as a wholesaler under the new law?

The law applies to residential real property and to a person acting as a wholesaler, either as a grantee or as a wholesaler’s representative. The bill contains its own definition, and the precise boundaries of that definition are the part your attorney will care about most.

We got a group of local wholesalers in a room with John T. Banjak, principal and general counsel at True Title and managing member of Banjak & Associates, to read through the actual language together. Banjak served as an assistant attorney general for the state of Missouri earlier in his career, so he has seen this from both sides. Even with that background at the table, the honest takeaway was that some of this is unsettled.

The question everyone kept circling was intent. If you always intend to close and fund the deal yourself, are you a wholesaler? If you market a property you are under contract on, does that marketing demonstrate intent to assign? Reasonable people are reading it differently right now, and the Missouri Attorney General’s office has not issued guidance on how it will enforce.

Nobody should tell you they know the answer yet. They do not.

What does the 14 day disclosure require?

Not less than fourteen calendar days before entering into a contract that transfers an interest in residential real property, the wholesaler must give the property owner a written disclosure. In plain terms, the disclosure is meant to tell the seller:

that you are acting as a wholesaler
that you intend to profit by reselling the contract or the property
that the price you are offering may be below market value

Both you and the property owner have to sign and date it. And you cannot enter into the contract until that is done and the fourteen days have run.

So the practical effect is a built in two week pause between your first real conversation with a seller and a signed contract.

What happens if you skip the disclosure?

The bill gives the property owner real recourse. If you did not deliver the disclosure before the contract, the owner may cancel at any time before the close of escrow, and the escrow agent disburses your earnest money to the owner within 30 days.

Your attorney can walk you through the rest of the exposure. But we want to spend our words somewhere more useful, because the conversation we keep having with local investors is not really about penalties.

The workaround problem

The moment a rule like this lands, people start looking for the seam in it. We have already heard the ideas going around. Backdate the disclosure. Paper it a little loose. Hope nobody checks.

Do not do that.

Not because you will get caught, though you might. Because it is the wrong way to treat a seller, and because it is the thing that brought this legislation down on our industry in the first place. The practices that got attention were investors offering a number they knew they could not deliver, shopping the contract, coming back to renegotiate the price down, stringing out closing dates, and clouding title when the seller tried to walk. Sellers got hurt. Lawmakers responded.

If you are being straight with people about what you do and what you can actually pay, this law asks you to put that in writing and wait two weeks. That is an inconvenience, not a threat.

And if the timing genuinely does not work for a deal, there is a clean answer that does not require anyone to fudge a date. Double close.

Policing this ourselves

Real estate agents have a structure for reporting agents who act unethically. Wholesalers do not have anything comparable, and that gap is part of why our industry got regulated instead of consulted.

The investors who show up to these conversations, who tell a peer when a practice is out of bounds, and who would rather lose a deal than damage a seller are the ones who make the case that this community can govern itself. That case gets made deal by deal, not in a hearing room.

Is wholesaling dead in Missouri?

No. But assignments just got harder, and the workaround most local investors are landing on is the double close.

Here is the distinction that matters:

Assignment. You go under contract, then sell that contract to an end buyer. This is the transaction the disclosure requirement is aimed at. After August 28, doing it without a signed disclosure and a fourteen day wait gives the seller the cancellation right described above.

Double close. You actually buy the property, then sell it. You take title. There is no contract assignment to disclose because you are a real buyer on a real closing.

Double closing has always been cleaner from a compliance standpoint. The catch is that it is not free. You need capital to fund that first closing, even if you own the property for twenty minutes.

That is the real shift here. A strategy that used to require no money is moving toward one that requires funding.

What this means depending on where you are

If you are newer to investing: the fourteen day pause is not necessarily bad news for you. It rewards being straightforward with sellers, which is how you should be operating anyway. Build the disclosure into your process now, before it is a rule you are scrambling to follow. And start building the lending relationship you will need if double closing becomes your default.

If you are experienced: your volume is your exposure. If you are running assignments at scale, every deal is a separate compliance question. Now is the time to sit down with your attorney, decide where your risk tolerance actually is, and get your funding lined up so a shift to double closes does not slow your deal flow.

Either way, the investors who handle this well are going to be the ones who decided on a process in August rather than in October.

Where FasterFunds Lending fits

If double closing becomes part of how you operate, you need a lender who can move at the speed that transaction requires and who understands why you are structuring it that way.

That is the work we do every day. FasterFunds Lending is a St. Louis based hard money lender, and our team is made up of local real estate investors. We have renovated, managed, valued, and sold property across St. Louis County, St. Charles County, and St. Louis City, with lending in Jefferson, Lincoln, Warren, and Franklin counties as well. When you bring us a deal, you are talking to someone who has stood in a house like it.

We also want to be honest about the limits of what we do. We are not your attorney, and we are not going to tell you how to structure your contracts. What we can tell you is whether a specific deal pencils, what it will take to fund it, and whether we think the numbers work. Sometimes that answer is no, and we will say so.

What to do between now and August 28

Read the actual bill text. Not a summary, not a Facebook post. The language is short.
Talk to a real estate attorney about how the definition of wholesaler applies to your specific business.
Decide on your process. Disclosure and wait, double close, or some combination depending on the deal.
Get your funding conversation started if double closing is going to be part of your plan. Capital lined up in advance is capital you are not scrambling for later.
Talk to other investors who are working through the same thing. You are not the only one.

That last one is useful. We host Buyers Club, our local investor community, and this exact topic has dominated the conversation for weeks. Three hundred people working through the same question is a better resource than any single opinion.

Working on a deal that needs funding? Bring us your next deal and we will look at it with you.

Want to talk it through with other St. Louis investors first? Join Buyers Club.

Need a vetted attorney, title company, or contractor? See the Buyers Club Vendor Team.

Who you want on your team for this

A law like this is a good reminder that the people around a deal matter as much as the deal. Two roles carry real weight here: a real estate attorney who can tell you how the wholesaler definition applies to how you actually operate, and an investor-friendly title company that has already thought about how it will handle double closes after August 28.

Both are on the Buyers Club Vendor Team, our vetted local list. Tom Durphy handles real estate law, and True Title is the investor-focused title company whose general counsel walked our group through this bill. Also worth a conversation: Tax Game Plan if a shift from assignments to double closes changes how your deals get taxed.

Missouri’s New Wholesaling Law (SB 973): What St. Louis Real Estate Investors Need to Know Before August 28, 2026