Compare OJO Home and Landed

For Sellers

Partner Agents
Undisclosed
Referral Fee
OJO Home is a broker that does not provide real estate services to home sellers. Instead, this company matches consumers with various real estate agents in exchange for an undisclosed referral fee. Referral fees set by such networks range anywhere between 25%-40% of the entire agent’s commission.

For Sellers

Not applicable
0
No Rates
Landed does not provide real estate services to home buyers.

For Buyers

Partner Agents
Undisclosed
Referral Fee
OJO Home is a broker that does not provide real estate services to home buyers. Instead, this company matches consumers with various real estate agents in exchange for an undisclosed referral fee. Referral fees set by such networks range anywhere between 25%-40% of the entire agent’s commission.

For Buyers

Referred Agents
30%
Referral Fee
Landed does not provide real estate services to home buyers. Instead, this company matches consumers with real estate agents in exchange for an estimated 30% referral fee. Landed results suffer from pay-to-play bias because the network does not match consumers with agents unwilling to pay 30% of their commission to Landed.

For Buyers

Origination Fee
0.75%
Home Value
Instead of working with Laded referred agents, consumers (teachers) can pay an origination fee equal to what the agent referral fee would have been: 0.75% of the total cost of the home.
Question: What is the difference between OJO Home and Landed?
Answer: Both OJO Home and Landed function as a referral fee network that enables broker-to-broker collusion with use of blanket referral agreements.
Compare OJO Home and Landed for home buying and selling. HomeOpenly is an impartial and an open resource focused on trending real estate services, portals and start-ups.

First published: 22 October 2020
Last updated: 25 April 2021

Buying and Selling with OJO Home

WARNING: Unlawful Kickbacks, Broker-to-Broker Collusion, False Marketing, Wire Fraud, Price Fixing.

OJO Home is a broker-to-broker collusion scheme, where "partner agents" unlawfully agree to pay massive kickbacks to receive your information and engage in market allocation, consumer allocation, false advertising, unlawful kickbacks, wire fraud, and price-fixing practices in violation of, inter alia, 18 U.S.C. § 1346, 18 U.S.C. § 1343, 15 U.S.C. § 1, 15 U.S.C. § 45, 12 U.S.C. § 2607, 12 C.F.R. § 1024.14. As a consumer, you will always significantly overpay for Realtor commissions subject to hidden kickbacks and pay-to-play steering promoted in this scheme.

United States federal antitrust laws prohibit consumer allocation and blanket referral agreements between real estate companies.

Be smart; do not allow your information to be "sold as a lead" to a double-dealing Realtor in exchange for massive commission kickbacks paid from your future home sale, or your future home purchase.


OJO Home is a referral fee network designed to collect referral fees by matching consumers with local real estate agents willing to pay it. OJO Home operates under a variety of broker licenses, mainly two issued by the Texas Real Estate Commission as OJO Home Inc. 9007689 and OJO Home LLC 9008342, but it does not produce any services that are typically offered by real estate agents and does not represent consumers when buying or selling real estate in any State. In exchange for matching consumers with an OJO Home Partner Agent, OJO Home is compensated by the Partner Agent with an undisclosed percentage of their commission. As of June 2020, OJO Home further operates a real estate online brokerage Movoto. When users are ready to talk to an in-person agent, OJO refers clients to a Movoto agent, or Partner brokerage.

OJO Home Pricing

OJO Home revenue comes from undisclosed referral fees. Referral fees set by such networks range anywhere between 25%-40% of the entire agent’s commission.

Listing Services

  • This Service Does Not Represent Sellers

Buyer's Agent Services

  • This Service Does Not Represent Buyers

OJO Home Editor's Review:

For consumers, OJO Home promises real estate assistance as a lead nurturing platform and a transaction manager. The platform is supposedly able to learn a buyer's preferences via machine learning and match them with homes that fit their needs. By gathering consumers' home preferences and budgets, OJO communicates conversationally through mobile text as a personal advisor throughout the home-buying process.

For real estate professionals, OJO Home promises a scalable, high-touch experience that reflects well on a brokerage and helps increase closings by scrubbing leads as they come in and nurturing buyers with unique insights powered by machine learning. Once a homebuyer is prepared, a home concierge initiates a live transfer to the Partner Agent. OJO representatives give Partner Agents all the background information on the homebuyer to make the transition as warm as possible. This handoff helps ensure both consumers and agents alike receive the most seamless, hassle-free experience. OJO claims to help real estate professionals to create stronger, better-informed connections with buyers and sellers and keeps them engaged until they're ready to get down to business.

For Partner Agents, there is no upfront cost to join OJO to receive leads and referrals. The referral fee is paid on each lead that results in a close.

In other words, OJO Home is a middle-man that scrubs consumer's information and passes it along to a broker who is willing to pay for it with a cut of their commission. All options offered to consumers by OJO Home suffer from pay-to-play bias. If a broker is unwilling to give a portion of their commission to OJO Home, the company has no interest in recommending them. The following is a set of statements taken from OJO's Terms of Service that all, effectively, show that OJO takes no responsibility for their recommendations.

"OJO will process lead inquiries from a variety of sources including but not limited to: your brokerage's website, your brand's website, and leads you have acquired from the major national search portals (e.g. Zillow, Homes.com, Realtor.com, Trulia, etc.)."

"We ingest your leads from your various sources (website, Realtor.com, etc.) in real time and will call leads in as quickly as 10 seconds. We do the legwork to get a customer on the phone and facilitate the live transfer to the first-available agent once a buyer is ready to be connected."

"By using the OJO services, you agree to receive phone calls and text messages from us and our partners. By using the OJO services, you expressly authorize OJO, its affiliated companies and its partners (described below) and each such entity's employees, contractors and software (collectively, "Service Provider") to communicate with you by phone and text at the wireless phone number provided or any other number that you may provide in the future. You understand that message and data rates may apply based upon the terms of your wireless service provider contract. You also agree that methods of contact may include use of auto-generated text messages or an automated telephone dialing system, even if you've registered that number on a Do-Not-Call registry, and that my consent to text messages and phone calls is not a condition to using any Service Provider's services. If you do not consent to receive these texts or calls, do not use the OJO service or provide your information to us."

"We do not endorse or recommend the products or services of any service provider and are not an agent or advisor to you or any service provider. We do not validate or investigate the licensing, certification or other requirements and qualifications of service providers. It is your responsibility to investigate any service providers before you engage them. You acknowledge and agree that these service providers are solely responsible for any services that they may provide to you and that we are not liable for any losses, costs, damages or claims in connection with, arising from, or related to, your use of a service provider's products or services."

"OJO is not a real estate agent or lending institution or other service provider. Instead, we, through the OJO services, may help to connect you with service providers that might meet your needs based on information provided by you. OJO does not, and will not, make any credit decision with any service provider referred to you. OJO does not issue mortgages or any other financial products."

"By accepting a referral to one of our Referral Partners, you grant us permission to share your User Data with the Referral Partner so that they may offer their products or services to you."

"When you accept a referral to one of our Referral Partners, you acknowledge that you are purchasing any products or services offered by the Referral Partner directly from them and that OJO is not a party to any agreement between you and the Referral Partner with respect to those products and services; and OJO is not responsible for that Referral Partner's products or services, the content therein, or any claims that you or any other party may have relating to that Referral Partner's products and services."

"By using the OJO services, you hereby release us of any and all losses, costs, damages or claims in connection with, arising from or related to your use of a service provider's products or services, including any fees charged by a service provider."

Clearly, OJO is a biased platform designed to funnel consumers toward brokers who pay them a kickback at the close of consumers' transactions. Consumers using OJO Home have zero control over what agents the company shares their information with. Instead of being "scrubbed" and "sold as leads" consumers looking for a competitive and fair representation can consider negotiating directly with real estate agents, or with help from unbiased consumer-focused online services that do not collect referral fees.

Conflicts of Interest

According to OJO Home, "When a consumer is ready to connect with an agent, up to five qualified agents are contacted via text message. The first agent to respond wins the opportunity. Upon responding to the consumer notification, the agent will receive a phone call for a warm transfer within one minute. This phone call must be answered promptly or the consumer introduction will go to another agent."

OJO Home doesn't care which agent, specifically, picks up the phone first, but it does care that the match is made only to someone in their referral network.

"After the introductory call with the consumer, agents will receive a text message with a link to update their profile in the Agent Dashboard. Agents will then receive bi-weekly reminders to update their buyer and seller profiles as they move further down the path toward closing on a new home."

This process is established to keep OJO Home informed about what stage of the transaction process the consumer is in. OJO Home needs to understand when the broker will close the deal and when it will receive a referral fee from the sale or purchase of the home. This means that OJO Home receives intimate details about consumers' transactions from Partner Agents.

According to one OJO Home Partner Agent, Sharon S. from Atlanta, GA, "Signing up was really easy. I also love that I can choose what kinds of leads I want and they show up on my phone. I'm talking to new clients within a few minutes. It's pretty neat."

Of course, this is a neat consumer brokering scheme, where agents pick "what leads they want" and consumers are steered only toward agents who choose to cut in OJO Home with a major share of their commission. In this scenario, consumers' needs are "ingested" and "warmed-up" for the agent.

Antitrust Implications

In reality, OJO Home is a broker-to-broker collusion scheme that scrubs consumer's information and passes it along to a colluding broker who is willing to pay for it with a cut of their commission. All Partner Agents agree to pay OJO Home a pre-arranged referral fee, on all closed transactions, through their employing broker. A referral agreement between OJO Home and a Partner Agent for a random transaction that may or may not happen sometime in the future is executed in advance.

OJO Home engages in consumer and market allocation schemes with Partner Agents brokerages, because it is a broker itself. Instead of representing consumers to help buy and sell homes, this "paper" brokerage actively disengages from its licensed activities so that every Partner Agent knows that OJO brokerage will not compete with them. OJO Home does not act in a real estate brokerage capacity, instead, their real estate license is used to collect a blanket referral fee from the largest number of brokers possible.

Sherman Act effectively requires all active real estate brokers to proactively compete for consumers. An agreement or an understanding between brokers not to compete for a mutual profit is a "per se" violation of antitrust regulations in the United States.

The amount of a referral fee between brokers must be negotiated with respect to an individual transaction. It is a per se violation of the Sherman Act for real estate brokers to agree on a "standard" referral fee that will be paid for producing a client. Real estate professionals are not allowed to enter into blanket referral agreements between one another because such agreements always restrict free trade.

Brokers are not allowed to organize their operations into any collusion schemes and networks, and instead, all brokers must compete for consumers on a fair playing field. Legitimate agents who choose to not engage in the OJO referral scheme are harmed as well because consumers are steered away in a highly competitive real estate market.

To comply in good faith with RESPA (12 U.S.C. 2607) Section 8 exception for cooperative brokerage and referral arrangements, legitimate real estate agents must render referral agreements in a particular instance for a particular transaction.

Actions of OJO Home "paper" brokerage directly increase the costs of owning homes in the United States due to added blanket referral fees, consumer allocation practices, and reverse completion between brokers. Partner Agents in the scheme have no incentive to compete for consumers with lower fees, instead, they have an incentive to compete for OJO Home' attention. In this scheme, both colluding parties benefit from offering consumers higher commissions. OJO Home promotes Partner Agents as somehow "superior" to those outside of the network, thus limiting free-market competitive forces and steering consumers in self-interest toward a network of very few agents who chose to agree to participate in the scheme.

As a licensed brokerage, OJO Home owes absolutely no duty of care to consumers and takes no responsibility for the transaction, despite receiving a direct financial benefit from the home sale or purchase completed by a third-party referred brokerage.

Where does OJO Home operate?

OJO Home currently operates in select areas across United States.

Buying and Selling with Landed

WARNING: Unlawful Kickbacks, Broker-to-Broker Collusion, False Marketing, Wire Fraud, Price Fixing.

Landed is a broker-to-broker collusion scheme, where "partner agents" unlawfully agree to pay massive kickbacks to receive your information and engage in market allocation, consumer allocation, false advertising, unlawful kickbacks, wire fraud, and price-fixing practices in violation of, inter alia, 18 U.S.C. § 1346, 18 U.S.C. § 1343, 15 U.S.C. § 1, 15 U.S.C. § 45, 12 U.S.C. § 2607, 12 C.F.R. § 1024.14. As a consumer, you will always significantly overpay for Realtor commissions subject to hidden kickbacks and pay-to-play steering promoted in this scheme.

United States federal antitrust laws prohibit consumer allocation and blanket referral agreements between real estate companies.

Be smart; do not allow your information to be "sold as a lead" to a double-dealing Realtor in exchange for massive commission kickbacks paid from your future home sale, or your future home purchase.


Landed is a referral fee network designed to collect fees by matching consumers with local real estate agents willing to participate. Landed operates as a licensed real estate brokerage in California under BRE License #01988003, but it does not produce any services that are typically offered by real estate agents and does not represent consumers when buying or selling real estate in any State.

Landed targets financially constrained consumer groups (teachers for now, but it soon plans to expand services to other professionals such as registered nurses, etc.) with a 10% down payment assistance option to co-invest when buying a home in expensive cities like San Francisco, Denver, Los Angeles, and Seattle.

The origination price of using the program, however, is hidden in referral fees that the company receives from each transaction when consumers work with agents referred by Landed.

Instead of working with Laded referred agents, consumers can pay an origination fee equal to what the agent referral fee would have been: 0.75% of the total cost of the home.

For example, if a consumer were to purchase a $1 million home, the origination fee equal to $7,500 would have to be paid in order to secure $100,000 down payment assistance. If the required down payment assistance amount is less, the fee would still remain the same. For example, if a consumer only wants to secure $50,000 in assistance, the origination fee still equals to $7,500 because this fee is based on the overall home value.

Landed also uses a select group of mortgage lenders who are specifically approved by the program. It is unclear what incentives are provided to Landed by these providers, or if consumers are able to use their own mortgage lender.

Landed Pricing

Landed revenue comes from either an estimated 30% broker referral fees, or origination fees set at 0.75% of purchased home value.

Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) provides cash funds to run the program. The 25% of the appreciation (or loss) in the price of the home upon sale is returned to Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and re-invested back into a down payment support fund.

Listing Services

  • This Service Does Not Represent Sellers

Buyer's Agent Services

  • This Service Does Not Represent Buyers

Landed Editor's Review:

On paper Landed seems to have a great idea – to help essential professionals (starting with educators) build financial security near the communities they serve. Digging deeper into the actual model turns out to be much less effective - Landed is a California licensed real estate broker that collects an estimated 30% referral fee from all real estate agents that participate. This fee makes it hardly a free service for anyone since referral fees are inevitably passed down to consumers. More importantly, Landed drives consumers toward agents who systematically price their services to accommodate such fees, this process is known as kickbacks.

Landed assistance program itself may be beneficial, but the costs of origination are certainly real. Landed uses excessive referral fees as a way to hide origination fees. Why? Simply because having to pay $7,500 to secure $100,000 down payment assistance (that comes with many strings attached, as well as a lien) seems a lot less attractive, especially when this fee remains the same, regardless of the assistance amount actually required.

By charging this fee as a form of commission kickbacks, the company hopes that most consumers won’t realize that this fee even exists – it is just a referral fee, who cares? In this review, we will show you how this fee very much exists and why it matters. Consumers can save tens of thousands by avoiding non-competitive real estate commissions, even if the buyer (teacher) decides to opt-in into Landed assistance program and pay the origination fee out-of-pocket.

Buyer’s refunds are available in all areas Landed currently offers an assistance program. The only way to take advantage of these savings is by negotiating with highly competitive real estate professionals without any referral fee agreements in place.

Buyer’s agents never work for free, instead, they can financially compete for consumers by offering refunds in 40 States. This is a legal incentive that helps to lower the cost of owning a home and is a growing trend in the industry.

Real estate agents only sign-up with Landed referral network because the price of the referral fee can be easily incorporated into their client’s agreement with excessive commissions. Landed either requires the use of their network, or it requires an origination fee to be paid, there is no third option.

As a licensed real estate agent that doesn’t perform any real estate services or takes any responsibility for the transaction, it is not entirely clear how Landed is able to operate under the Business and Professions Code and RESPA.

Nonetheless, funds from Chan Zuckerberg Initiative fund is a real incentive that consumers are able to utilize in exchange for a 25% share of the investment gain or loss with Landed (if Landed contributes less than 10% down, the future appreciation/depreciation sharing also changes proportionally. For every 1% Landed contributes, Landed shares in 2.5% of the appreciation (or depreciation, if any.)

In order to place benefits and costs of the program into perspective, we ran local results against HomeOpenly to see who offers buyer’s refunds in one of the areas Landed serves – San Francisco, CA.

We used a random home valued at around $1 Million to generate these results (as of April 2019.) Among various savings offers from local agents, we found two highly reputable agents (including a VC-backed flat fee agent that aims to deliver savings to consumers.)

Among these results, one agent offers 65% rebate that yields a buyer’s refund amount estimated at $19,500 and another offers $9,950 flat representation fee that yields buyer’s refund amount estimated at $20,050.

For the purpose of this discussion, these competitive saving, in the form of a refund, are about $20,000 (assuming 3% buyer’s agent commission split offered by the seller’s agent.) Home buyers do not pay any taxes on the amount, the refund is always tax-free, similar to any other service refund.

Now, the buyer can take this refund check of $20,000 pay the Landed origination fee out-of-pocket set at $7,500 and still walk away with $12,500 in cash savings. Why? These savings agents are highly competitive and advertise their rates subject to 0% referral fees.

HomeOpenly works with real estate agents that genuinely lower the cost of homeownership. The fact is, if the buyer doesn’t do this, the total expense of using Landed referral network plus the commission is $30,000 ($7,500 referral fee paid to Landed, plus $22,500 of the remaining commissions buyer’s agent actually keeps).

Using Landed referral network, in this case, means leaving $12,500 on the table. Instead, a teacher can easily engage a great competitive agent, receive $20,000 amount as a refund, and only pay origination fee out-of-pocket set at $7,500.

In this review, we separate issue to secure down payment assistance with an ability to negotiate a competitive refund with your agent subject to 0% referral fees. We bring this origination fee to full transparency so that there no illusion on how Landed service actually operates and why it steers consumers toward their referral network.

You, the teacher, have to take into account the fact that you pay all homeownership expenses, county taxes, maintenance, insurance, interest and closing costs (you pay the costs of ownership, but you don’t make any monthly payments to Landed.) As such, home appreciation you gain comes at a very high price, while the origination fee is something that you pay upfront, either out-of-pocket or with excessive commissions.

Is $7,500 origination fee a worthy expense to secure down payment assistance? You have to decide this.

This simple test aims to point out that $20,000 in buyers refund is available to buyers in this situation when working with the right local agents. When using Landed referral fee network agents, the refund amount is likely to be zero.

Moreover, non-competitive fees offered by Landed referred agents will become incorporated into a mortgage payment, and instead of the consumer getting a tax-free refund, these fees further incur mortgage interest for the duration of the mortgage.

Landed receives the second lowest score because this service is clearly biased toward high-priced real estate agents, as it aims to brush off the true costs of origination fees set at 0.75% of purchased home value, typically hidden in referral fee agreements.

Landed was presented the following questions prior to the review getting published, but Landed has not responded with any comments.

  • Whenever the consumer approaches Landed, with their own buyer’s agent, what is the origination fee amount they would be required to pay in order to use the service?
  • Are consumers able to negotiate a buyer’s refund in California with agents who are part of Landed referral network?
  • What is the referral fee percentage or amount Landed charges real estate agents in the network?
  • What happens in cases where the consumer is looking to buy FSBO listed home, where there is no listing agent and no buyer’s agent commission is offered by the seller?

Landed must be well aware of these issues, but continues to operate on pay-to-play methodology in order to collect origination and referral fees that needlessly make home buying and selling more expensive, while claiming that it makes homeownership more affordable.

Teachers should certainly not ignore Landed as an option, but with a full understanding that there may better terms available to them elsewhere for buyer’s representation, and that this program comes with high fees attached.

Where does Landed operate?

Landed currently operates in select areas across California (San Francisco Bay Area, Los Angeles Metro Area, and San Diego Metro Area), Colorado (Denver and Boulder metro areas), and Washington (King County Metro Area)..