Many developers see the resale fee as a creative way to get new financing. They are hoping to one day use the trickle of cash from these fees as collateral for a loan, or to get cash up front if pools of the fees are packaged into securities to be bought and sold on Wall Street. Freehold has begun shopping the idea of securitizing the resale fees, much as subprime loans were packaged and sold to investors.

Someone selling a home for $500,000, for example, would have to pay the original developer $5,000. If the home sold again two years later for $750,000, the second seller would have to pony up $7,500 to the developer, and so on. Even if a home declines in value, the seller still must pay the 1 percent fee. Freehold gets a cut of the resale fee; if the fees are securitized, it retains a percentage of the cash generated from the securitization.

Freehold’s principals and lawyers have been aggressive in sales pitches to developers, but have declined to give details on their clients, securitization efforts or the company itself. Freehold moved its corporate office from Round Rock, Tex., to New York this year as it stepped up efforts to securitize the resale fees.

Mr. White characterizes the resale fee as a win-win deal for the developer and the home buyer. The fees let developers spread out the cost of building the roads, utilities and other infrastructure across all homeowners in a subdivision, rather than just the initial buyers. As a result, he said, the developer can lower the initial price of a home to the first buyer.

For example, he says, a typical $250,000 home may be able to sell for about $5,000 less. “The fee is a fair and equitable way to spread development costs, and results in lower costs to the average consumer,” Mr. White says.

Ted Thieman, founder of the real estate developer Thieman Enterprises in Vandalia, Ohio, sees Freehold’s securitization plan as the holy grail that will provide him with badly needed cash. He signed up with Freehold last year after lenders refused to provide financing for him to develop land in Dayton, Ohio.

“People are going bankrupt out here, and there’s no cash flow in our developments anymore,” he says. “This is the only source that’s available to us.”