California attorney: housing-placement fee compliance review for marketplace (pre-launch)

ABOUT US We run an established online classifieds marketplace serving a university community in California. Housing listings (rooms, sublets, short leases) are a core category. Today the platform is free to use for housing: seekers and hosts connect and transact entirely on their own. We are designing — but have NOT launched — a paid booking feature, and we want legal advice before we take our first payment. The answers to the questions below will directly shape the product design (fee structure, when we charge, refund policy, and the wording shown to users), so we're engaging counsel at the design stage, not after. HOW THE FEATURE WORKS (CURRENT DESIGN) - A housing seeker — often an incoming student still abroad — finds a curated listing and clicks "Book." We place a card authorization for first month's rent plus our placement fee (the fee can equal or exceed a month's rent — e.g., rent $2,000, fee $4,000, authorization $6,000). - A human on our team then works the placement: verifies the seeker, contacts the host, and confirms the host will accept the placement. - We capture only our placement fee, and only after the host confirms the placement. The rent portion of the authorization is released in full; the seeker pays rent directly to the host at move-in. We never hold or transmit the rent in the base design. - If no placement happens, the entire authorization is released and the seeker pays nothing. - Deliberately low volume at first (a handful of bookings per month), hand-operated, as a validation phase. QUESTIONS WE NEED ANSWERED (IN WRITING) 1. Prepaid rental listing service / broker licensing. Does a placement fee of this kind fall under California's prepaid rental listing service regime (Bus. & Prof. Code Section 10167 et seq.) — with its licensing, fee, and mandatory-refund rules — or above it into full real-estate broker licensing? Does charging only AFTER the host confirms the placement (never before) change the analysis? 2. If licensing is required: what are our realistic fallback structures — a different fee level, a licensed partner, a different service definition — and what would each require? 3. Money transmission. If a future version DID hold the rent and pass it to the host, would that trigger money-transmitter licensing? 4. SB 478 / honest pricing. A listing advertised at $2,000/mo with a mandatory platform fee of $4,000 — how do we present pricing compliantly? 5. Tenancy creation. Does a one-month booking create a tenancy under California's ~30-day threshold, and what is the platform's exposure if it does? 6. Subletting authority. Many hosts are themselves renters, and most leases prohibit subletting. What is our exposure for systematically facilitating placements with such hosts, and what should our vetting or disclosures require? 7. Consumer disclosures. Review of our booking-flow language around card authorizations ("pending," "released in full if not placed"), capture timing, and refund terms. IDEAL BACKGROUND - Licensed to practice in California - Experience with real estate regulation, marketplace/platform businesses, or payments/consumer-protection compliance (any two of the three is great) - Comfortable advising an early-stage product: practical, risk-ranked answers, not just issue-spotting - Able to deliver a plain-English written memo we can design against DELIVERABLES & PROCESS 1. Initial video call (~1 hour) to walk through the model and refine the question list. 2. Written memo answering the questions above, with a clear read on which parts of the design must change vs. are acceptable risk. 3. Optional follow-up: review of user-facing copy and terms for the booking flow. We expect to run brief paid intro calls with 2–3 candidates before selecting one for the written memo. Please include your relevant experience with California real-estate or marketplace regulation, your hourly rate, and your availability for an initial call in the next 1–2 weeks.