On July 8, 2024, Gov. Josh Shapiro signed Act 52—the Wholesale Real Estate Transaction Transparency and Protection Act—into law, which requires real estate wholesalers to obtain licensing and grants additional protections to property owners in wholesale transactions.

Real estate wholesaling is a practice where an individual or company enters into a contract to purchase a property and then sells the contract to a third party for a fee—usually an investor—without ever owning the property. By way of illustration: a property owner and a wholesaler execute a contract in which the wholesaler will purchase a property for $200,000, but the contract allows the wholesaler to assign the contract to another buyer. The wholesaler then assigns the contract to an investor for a higher price of $210,000, and pockets $10,000 as an assignment fee. The wholesaler essentially acts as a “middleman” and never owns the property, and then profits the difference between the original contract price and the assignment fee.