Compare OJO Home and Orchard

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

List and Move First
5% to 6%
Listing Rate
Minimum commissions and other terms may apply. Buyer's Agent Commission (2.5%-3%) is included in 5% to 6% fees whenever Orchard acts as a dual agent, otherwise 2.5%-3% BAC is offered to the Buyer Agent via MLS. Move First program allows home seller to buy a new home before lisitng thier current home on the open market. Orchard also offers a Guaranteed Offer to home sellers, but HomeOpenly does not recommend taking this option due to high losses of equity.

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

Buy with Orchard
0%
Buyer Rebate
Minimum commissions and other terms may apply. Buyer's Agent Commission (2.5%-3%) is typically received by Orchard from a home purchase, but this may differ on an individual sale. Orchard further make a cash-backed offer as an added value as part of their buyer agent services.
Question: What is the difference between OJO Home and Orchard?
Answer: OJO Home is a referral fee network that enables broker-to-broker collusion with use of blanket referral agreements while Orchard is a full-service real estate agent and a stand-in cash program for buyers that offers savings to homebuyers and home sellers
Compare OJO Home and Orchard 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: 17 March 2022
Last updated: 17 March 2022

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 Orchard

2022 Editor’s Score Update: Orchard (formerly known as Perch) is a VC-backed real estate company headquartered in NY that has recently pivoted (changed their business model) from what used to be an iBuyer to what is now a bridge loan Fintech-assisted home buying and home selling.

This is a positive business model change that has organically improved the Editor’s score for Orchard on HomeOpenly platform with an updated Editor’s review for this business. The archived version of the previous Editor’s review for Orchard is available here. HomeOpenly Editor’s Score is adaptable to businesses in the US housing sector either improve or degrade their service offerings to consumers. An organic imporvment in HomeOpenly Editor’s score is a sign of companies’ willingness to improve their practices. When companies improve their practices, HomeOpenly Editor’s Score organically follows.

HomeOpenly Users’ Reviews for Orchard are published in accordance with Consumer Review Fairness Act and fair marketing and advertising principles. HomeOpenly never removes legitimate Users’ Reviews posted by consumers. However, we recommend that consumers reference newer Users’ Reviews posted. Some older Users’ Reviews for Orchard posted by consumers may no longer reflect upon Orchard’s current real estate and Fintech bridge loan services.

Orchard Pricing

Orchard primarily makes money with real estate commissions, but also with a difference between buying and selling each home when a home seller accepts a Guaranteed Offer. Sellers can expect to receive 80%-85% of their home value from Guaranteed Offer type of sale after any fees, cost of the minor repairs, and resale. As a Fintech-enabled Listing Realtor, Orchard Realty charges Move First fee (the same as List with Orchard fee) at 5% to 6% of your home sale (where Orchard acts as a dual agent and collects the 3% listing fee plus the 3% BAC Buyer Agent Commission.). Buy with Orchard fee is paid from the BAC Buyer Agent Commission typically offered via MLS at 2.5% to 3% to buyer agents. When acting as a buyer agent, Orchard does not offer any rebates from the BAC amount it receives, but the service includes Orchard's cash-backed offer as an added value (when compared to buying the same home with another buyer agent who does not offer rebates to buyers.)

Listing Services

  • MLS Listing
  • Zillow, Trulia, etc. Listing
  • Accept and Deliver All Offers and Counteroffers
  • Hold Open Houses
  • Professional Floor Plans
  • Yard Signage Installation
  • Spare Key Lock-box Installation
  • Schedule Inspection Services
  • Schedule Private Showings
  • Closing Duties
  • Professional Photography

Buyer's Agent Services

  • Find the Property
  • Accept and Deliver All Offers and Counteroffers
  • Recommend Other Professionals
  • Attend Inspection Services
  • Schedule Private Showings
  • Negotiate Needed Repairs
  • Closing Duties

Orchard Editor's Review:

Move First and Home Listing Services

Orchard Brokerage offers home sellers a Fintech-enabled buy before listing Move First bridge loan option in certain areas where it operates. This program is potentially a value-added service for consumers where a home seller can list their home for sale after they buy another home and move into a new property. This program is not free, and home sellers must be aware of program specifics to fully understand if this is the right option for your case. The Editor's review examines the program based on the cost vs benefit, as well as the available alternatives to home sellers.

The one critical difference in this program is that Orchard offers two separate (and business-wise unrelated) services to home sellers as “tied” into a single offering: (1) service of a real estate listing agent and (2) service to produce a bridge loan between two mortgages.

This tied notion is important because it directly affects the home selling fees associated with using Orchard compared to an alternative real estate service that may offer home sellers lower costs of real estate commissions and/or an alternative Fintech-enabled bridge loan program that may offer an untied bridge loan on better terms. Home selling fees (Realtor commissions) are the biggest single line-item expense in real estate transactions.

For example, let’s examine the 6% commission rate currently advertised for Move First service (if Orchard acts as a dual agent and collects the 3% listing fee plus the 3% BAC Buyer Agent Commission.) On a $4 million home sale, the total 6% gross commissions taken by Orchard amounts to $240,000. This is the amount of equity a home seller would need to convert into fees to pay Orchard for their service, and a buyer to pay for out of his/her new mortgage sum. How Orchard advertises these fees becomes very important in a competitive real estate market where competing Realtors may offer much lower listing fees or similar fees for very different services rendered.

For a home seller, it is important to shop for listing broker commissions because of the significant difference between net equity and total equity left after a home sale. The bank does not care how much in fees are lost during a sale, only homeowners’ net equity is lost in transaction fees. Remember, every dollar in net equity from a home sale is paid for with years of mortgage interest, insurance, taxes, and other life-cycle costs.

Buyer Agent Services

For home buyers, Orchard offers the services of a buyer agent supported by cash-backed offers. This bridge loan program is not free for buyers, it is a product of high interest in a short period, paid for with fees. In Orchard’s case, these fees are BAC Buyer Agent Commissions offered on MLS. However, unlike cash iBuyers that drain equity, the premise of a bridge loan cash leverage is to improve the outcome of the real estate transaction with a more reliable offer made by the home buyer, backed by rapid access to someone else’s cash. This distinction allows a buyer to use Orchard’s VC cash vault to secure a home purchase on better terms.

The purpose of the cash-backed offers benefits the home buyer, but this program also places the home buyer into an agreement with Orchard where the home buyer may face fees and penalties for backing out of the deal, as well as limited acceptance into the loan program based on home buyers’ financial standing, location, home value, and other situational requirements, etc. Orchard does not currently publish specifics for these terms anywhere, and it does not disclose the acceptance rate into the program. This is not a regular loan product, thus it largely remains a black box. It should be noted, however, that this is a universal issue with any similar Fintech bridge loan product because the program must assume that a home buyer is able (and likely) to secure a mortgage.

The home buyer pays for the bridge loan product because it is coupled with the Buyer Agent Commission (BAC) that Orchard receives from the home purchase. This amount is offered on MLS, typically at 2.5% to 3% of the home sale price. Some of Orchard’s competitors offer rebates from this BAC amount as a way to compete for home buyers' business. For example, on a $4 million home purchase, Orchard Brokerage receives about $100,000 as a Buyer Agent Commission (BAC) amount. If a competing brokerage offers a home buyer on that same sale, a 50% rebate that is a $50,000 tax-free cash in the home buyer’s bank account (this is typically subject to lender approval and only in 40 US States and Washington DC. Ten (10) US States currently maintain anticompetitive state bans on buyer rebates.) This potential cash rebate is the opportunity benefit that a home buyer gives up to use Orchard Brokerage to represent them with a bridge loan program. Is the buyer rebate better or is the bridge loan better? This is up to each home buyer to decide, but either one of these options holds an inherent value.

Guaranteed Offer

Orchard was born as an iBuyer, but the company has since shifted its business model to a Fintech-enabled Realtor. iBuyers systematically make below-market offers to home sellers, at about 80% of the true open market value when adding together the lower priced offers and the exigent fees.

For example, Orchard claims that their fees to take the Guaranteed Offer is 7% of the home value, but that does not include the hidden fees of below-market offers made to home sellers. Orchard Guaranteed Offer may seem like a good idea to a home seller, but it is probably the worst equity drain there is. Remember, a mortgage company does not care how a home seller sells their home – they receive the same remaining mortgage sum amount regardless if a home seller has lost 20% of their equity or 2% of their equity in real estate transaction fees. A 20% loss in total equity easily translates into 90% of net equity the home seller has in their home. Transaction fees in real estate are often hidden from home sellers because they are paid out from the mortgage sum, but this money is very real when it comes to the remaining net equity after the sale.

iBuying suffers from “double transaction” costs and ultra-high risks of buying and reselling a home on the open market. iBuying is systematically the most expensive way to transfer ownership of real estate in the United States. The best way for consumers to transfer real estate is on the open market, subject to competitive commissions and fees.

When Orchard Brokerage acts as a home sellers’ primary listing agent and a representative, it creates a conflict of interest by offering their client an offer on their home that the company knows is below the market price. By tying the service of a self-serving iBuyer and a service of a Realtor into a single proposition is a serious conflict. Selling directly to Orchard should be the sellers’ last resort option. Even Orchard itself admits that this program is a statistical UX failure where 95% of their customers do not choose to sell to Orchard. Orchard claims that the Guaranteed Offer helps to protect the seller, but the true cost of accepting a below-market iBuyer option makes their claims statistically unsupported. Either way, a consumer would need to hire another Realtor to help them evaluate the Guaranteed Offer from an unbiased perspective, where Orchard Brokerage cannot be trusted to make such determination in self-interest. iBuyers do not have a duty to represent home sellers, they only have to represent their balance sheets and shareholders.

Neutral Rating for Orchard

HomeOpenly Editor’s rating for Orchard is Neutral. First of all, Neutral is not a bad rating on HomeOpenly - it is Neutral. The main aspects of the Orchard services offer added value to consumers as a Fintech-enabled real estate brokerage, a bridge loan, and an inclusive home listing repairs and home staging Concierge. At the same time, some of the Orchard practices should give consumers a pause to think.

Orchard has already made a great effort to primarily switch their model from an equity-drain product of an iBuyer to use VC cash as leverage to help consumers, which means that the company is willing to improve its services. As always, Orchard’s customers are encouraged to share personal feedback as the ultimate gauge of service and value with any sentiment.

Where does Orchard operate?

Orchard currently operates in select areas across Austin, TX; Dallas-Fort Worth, TX; San Antonio, TX; Houston, TX; Denver, CO; Atlanta, GA; Charlotte, NC; Raleigh-Durham, NC; Montgomery County, MD; Northern Virginia.