Flyhomes is a multi-state full-service real estate agent offers consumers listing savings and buyer’s refunds in select areas across Washington, Oregon, Illinois, Massachusetts, and California.
In Oregon state law currently does not allow Flyhomes to offer buyer’s rebates to consumers.
Flyhomes offers listing savings to sellers (1% listing fee) and commission refunds to buyers (32% estimated rebate where allowed by State law.)
Flyhomes also offers buyers Cash Offers stand-in program, where the company either assures buyer’s offer or buys a home and resells it to the buyer for an added fee (1% service fee).
A similar Trade-in Program is available for sellers.
Flyhomes is a consumer-focused saving real estate broker that offers a wide variety of value-added propositions for home buyers and sellers in select areas where it operates.
Agent Listings
As a listing agent, Flyhomes works with a seller to prepare their home for listing, including taking professional photos, pricing home, and publishing marketing materials. Flyhomes lists all homes on the local MLS as well as typical MLS Aggregators.
Trade-in Program for Sellers
Flyhomes is not an iBuyer. Flyhomes offers sellers a Trade-in Program where the company runs a pricing analysis on seller's current home and sets a conservative price guarantee for the amount that it will pay to buy it outright.
Once a seller selects a new home and her purchase offer is accepted, the company lists the seller's current home on the market in order to sell it for more than the price guarantee amount. Once the home sells company accounts for its expenses. Flyhomes Trade-in Program is a value-added proposition and a viable alternative to iBuyer Offers. Unlike Flyhomes, with an iBuyer seller inevitably loses a lot of their home net equity in the process due to the risk of holding and re-selling the home by the iBuyer. Sellers using Trade-in Program do not lose equity and only pay a moderate fee in the process. Granted, Flyhomes does not offer "quick cash" iBuyer proposition, where the seller still needs to list their home in the open market and wait for better offers to come in and pay expenses back, but the equity savings is why we rate this program as genuinely consumer-focused.
Sellers who use Flyhomes Trade-in program do not receive a rebate on the buy-side and Flyhomes charges sellers 1% commission as a service fee (this does not include the buy-side agent commission) to list their home. Flyhomes evaluates seller's home before the seller can participate in Trade-in Program and reserves the right to request repairs prior to seller's inclusion in the program.
Buyer's Agent
As a buyer's agent, Flyhomes works with buyers to find a home, schedule inspections, negotiate repairs and finalize the purchase. Flyhomes offers overall great value to consumers looking to buy or sell a home including a convenient "request tour" option on the Flyhomes website in order to easily schedule home viewings with their service team.
Guaranteed and Cash Offers for Buyers
Flyhomes offers buyers a unique Cash Offers stand-in program where Flyhomes purchases a home outright from the seller on a buyer's behalf in as few as 2 days and sells it back at the same price to the buyer on an agreed upon closing date.
When a Cash Offer is not available, buyers can utilize Guaranteed Offer instead. For the Guaranteed Offer program, Flyhomes guarantees the seller that the home will close, and if it doesn't, Flyhomes will then buy the home for the same terms.
Cash Offers stand-in program is not free, it is also highly selective. Cash Offers program may come with added risks in the event the buyer decides to back out of the sale. Buyers should carefully review their agreement with Flyhomes before participating in Cash Offers stand-in program so to fully understand the fees and potential penalties for backing out of the Cash Offer once it is made.
Buyers can only utilize Cash Offers when working with Flyhomes, which means that if there is another local real estate agent who offers a buyer a better commission refund, such as a flat fee option, the buyer cannot take advantage of these larger savings with Cash Offers.
In some cases, an alternative savings model may better serve buyers financially than Cash Offers proposition due to a sheer price tag of standard real estate commissions.
Reali is a California-based savings broker, offers consumers listing savings and buyer’s refunds in select areas across Northern and Southern California.
Reali offers flat fee listing at $950 for homes up to $250,000, $4,950 for homes up to $750,000, and $9,950 for homes priced over $750,000. Buyers receive a 100% refund of the Buyer’s Agent Commission (2.5%-3%) at the close of sale, minus a fee set at $950 for homes up to $250,000, $4,950 for homes up to $750,000, and $9,950 for homes priced over $750,000.
When Reali is unable or unwilling to provide services to buyers or sellers, it allocates consumers using a referral fee network called Radius Agent in exchange for a 30% referral fees.
Reali is a consumer-focused real estate agent that successfully represents consumers across California and offers sizeable savings.
Reali pricing structure closely resembles a listing rate set at 1% of a home sale or a refund set at 67% for buyers; it is highly transparent.
Reali Agents are salaried client-service focused employees measured by customer satisfaction who are not motivated by commissions. Reali is a technology-driven agent that offers customers tools and data to drive an efficient real estate transaction process.
Reali service includes posting home on the MLS and MLS Aggregator services, professional photos and 3D images in addition to all typical services offered by a traditional real estate agent. Reali gives sellers access to a well-designed dashboard with great communication features.
For Buyers, Reali offers real-time listing notifications, on-demand home tours and a client web portal for monitoring the purchase process - making it easier to find and buy homes. Overall Reali offers an excellent proposition to Buyers and Sellers alike.
In 2019 Reali has entered into a market allocation agreement with Radius Agent to farm out clients Reali is unable to serve in exchange for referral fees to random real estate agents. Reali declined to comment on our request for details, but generally, the Radius Agent platform allows brokers to trade consumers’ information with other brokers in exchange for 30% in referral fees.
Radius Agent keeps a portion of the fee and Reali receives the rest. Consumer brokering is an act of selling information of potential home buyers and home sellers (paid referrals) between real estate brokers, in exchange for a cut of a broker’s commission.
Brokers on each side of the adopted scheme, cause direct damage to the real estate representation market with reverse competition, hidden referral fees, limited choices to consumers, unnecessary high commissions, and client confusion. Since these random referred brokers are not employed by Reali, they cannot offer consumers the same rates and benefits as Reali, in fact, Reali can never dictate any terms of such agreements.
Farming out leads with Radius Agent to random brokers is a pay-to-play scheme that serves no benefit to consumers. Consumers are highly likely to overpay for listing commissions and receive little or no refund when their information is traded as a commodity with use of the Radius Agent network. The added junk fee makes it impossible for agents to offer consumers competitive market rates.