Compare Ribbon and Tomo

For Sellers

Not Applicable
0
No Rates
Ribbon does not offer services to sellers.

For Sellers

Not Applicable
0
No Rates
Tomo Brokerage does not currently allocate home sellers to listing real estate agents.

For Buyers

Cash Offer
1.95%
Service Fee
It costs 1.95% to make a Ribbon Cash Offer. Cash Offer made with Ribbon is not free to buyers since the seller will have to account for the added fee when accepting an offer. Cash Offers stand-in program is highly selective and may come with added risks in case a buyer decides to back out of the sale. Buyers should carefully review their agreement with Ribbon.

For Buyers

Partner Agents
25%-35%
Referral Fee
Tomo Brokerage is a paper broker that does not provide real estate services to home buyers. Instead, this company allocates consumers to real estate agents in exchange for a hidden referral fee, likely set at 25%-35% of their entire commission. Tomo, via Tomo Mortgage, LLC mortgage brokerage further price fixes buyer commission rebates by converting commission kickbacks into discounted interest rates by offering a “perk” of 0.125% against the quoted interest rate in an effort to entice more consumers into the price fixing scheme with Tomo Brokerage
Question: What is the difference between Ribbon and Tomo?
Answer: Ribbon is a stand-in cash offers program for buyers while Tomo is a referral fee network that enables broker-to-broker collusion with use of blanket referral agreements
Compare Ribbon and Tomo 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: 03 July 2021
Last updated: 03 July 2021

Buying with Ribbon

Ribbon is a multi-state stand-in cash-backed offer program that aims to help buyers when purchasing a home, it is not a real estate agent, nor is it an iBuyer.

Ribbon is a cash program for buyers that may help the buyer to make a competitive offer. Ribbon program also comes with added risks and sizable fees.

Despite the fact that the program costs an additional 1.95% service fee when used properly, Ribbon Cash Offer may be beneficial to the buyer in cases when a seller is highly motivated by a faster sale. If you are a buyer looking into this program, we recommend that you read the entire Editor’s Review for unbiased tips on how to navigate this process.

Ribbon Pricing

Ribbon also offers buyers Cash Offers stand-in program, where the company either backs buyer’s offer or buys a home and resells it back to the buyer for an added fee (1.95% service fee)

Listing Services

  • This Service Does Not Represent Sellers

Buyer's Agent Services

  • This Service Does Not Represent Buyers

Ribbon Editor's Review:

Ribbon is a consumer-focused cash-backed value-added proposition for home buyers in select areas where it operates. Ribbon claims that buyers are able to make offers to sellers that are less than the asking price due to the added security of each offer. In this review, we focus primarily on this claim when placed against the fact that the program costs an additional 1.95% in fees. Placing additional fees into real estate process almost never leads to savings, however, making secure offers does offer certain benefits. Using Ribbon Offers does not preclude the buyer from negotiating a buyer’s commission refund with their real estate agent.

Guaranteed Cash Offers
Ribbon offers buyers a Cash Offers stand-in program where Ribbon purchases a home outright from the seller on a buyer’s behalf, and sells it back at the same price to the buyer on an agreed upon closing date. Ribbon guarantees the seller that the home will close, and if it doesn’t, Ribbon will then buy the home for the same terms. Cash Offers stand-in program is not free, it is also highly selective.

Ribbon extensively qualifies clients with a complete financial background check prior to doing business. Cash Offers program also comes with added risks in the event the buyer decides to back out of the sale. Buyers should carefully review their agreement with Ribbon before participating in the 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.

In order to maximize their options, Buyers should utilize Ribbon Cash Offer alongside a traditional non-Ribbon Offer that does not include the added 1.95% Ribbon Fee. Ribbon allows this as an option and buyers should always place two offers on the table before the seller so that the seller can pick whichever option suits them the best. Unless a buyer places Ribbon Offer and non-Ribbon Offer before the seller, another buyer who makes non-Ribbon Offer may be at an advantage because it comes without the Ribbon fee.

If the seller chooses non-Ribbon Offer, they will not pay the Ribbon fee, but they still have an option to go with Ribbon Offer if they want.

If hustle and risk of placing a Ribbon Offers genuinely comes with added savings, buyers should theoretically be able to place a winning Ribbon Offer at 95% value of their traditional non-Ribbon Offer. This becomes the ultimate test - if the seller decides to accept a lower Ribbon Offer due to added security, buyer genuinely saves 5% in this type of transaction. If the Seller accepts a traditional non-Ribbon Offer, then this program didn’t help the buyer, but it didn’t cost anything either.

If the buyer only places a single Ribbon Offer on the table before the seller, there is nothing to compare savings against and, instead, all parties may have just wasted 1.95% on fees without any reason to do so. Before placing this review, we had asked Ribbon team for details about the program:

Question 1: Ribbon states that if the Buyer backs out from the purchase after making the Ribbon Offer they would lose the Due Diligence Deposit (if applicable) and Earnest Money Deposit. How much are these penalties, and how are these calculated? When are these applicable? Does this penalty remain in place if the appraisal comes in below the Ribbon Offer? Are there any other penalties for backing out of the Ribbon Offer?

Ribbon Answer: The buyer contributes their standard DD / EMD fees that are typically 1% of the purchase price. These are funds that are preserved and credited back to the buyer when they repurchase from Ribbon. Ribbon buys and reserves the home for the consumer buyer. If the buyer chooses not to purchase the home, these funds would be credited back if Ribbon resells the home back into the open market above the original purchase price. Less than 3% of buyers choose not to purchase the home after we step in to buy on their behalf so this is an uncommon outcome. Additionally, consumers requested that when we buy, to provide consumers with a 1-year lease so they have the peace of mind of the home they are living in. We introduced this feature and buyers carry standard responsible for a 1-yr lease that would terminate immediately upon their purchase of the home from Ribbon.

Question 2: Ribbon states that Ribbon Offer typically commands a 5% discount relative to competing bids which have financing contingencies. Do Ribbon terms allow Buyers to make two concurrent bids to the Seller - one set at 100% of the home price with typical financing contingencies as a non-Ribbon Offer and another as the Ribbon Offer made at 95% of the same offer amount? If the Buyer were to propose this option to Ribbon, what would the reply be?

Ribbon Answer: Yes, a buyer can make a Ribbon and Non-Ribbon offer. We believe consumers should have a choice in how they buy and we enable this for them. We have enabled this for other buyers and this is one of several ways in which we calculate the true cash discount rate.

Question 3: Ribbon states that Ribbon Offer typically commands a discount of 5% or more of the home price, when compared to the 1.95% Ribbon fee. Can Ribbon show proof of this statement? Is there a possibility that the Seller considers Ribbon fee a deterrent in light of a competing offer without the fee?

Ribbon Answer: We establish a cash discount based on the following methodology: where did the Ribbon offer clear relative to other offers received by the seller. We often receive this input from the listing agent. If not, we calculate cash discounts based on the predicted and actual appraisal value of the home.

Question 4: When Ribbon purchases the home, instead of the Buyer, Ribbon pays Buyer's Agent Commission under its own agreement with the Agent. In this scenario, Buyer's Agent does not take any risk nor has any added expense in case the Buyer backs out of the deal. This gives the Buyer's Agent, effectively, two clients instead of one. Why should the Buyer believe that this Agent is not looking out for her own interest since both Ribbon and the Buyer are represented by the same Agent and are subject to the same commission structure? How can the same Agent fairly represent two distinctly different Buyers in the same transaction?

Ribbon Answer: Ribbon stands in as the backup buyer to the original buyer represented by the realtor. If, and only if, the original buyer is unable to close on time, Ribbon stands in to purchase the home on their behalf at the exact same terms as the original offer. As such, we have zero conflict of interests as the original buyer sets the price and terms with their realtor. Ribbon provides, upfront, the max terms that we will back the home for (this includes, max purchase price, minimum DD/EMD fee, minimum DD time period and minimum time to close). The realtor represents the original buyer up until the point where the contract is assigned to Ribbon prior to close.

Ribbon clearly offers the buyer an interesting value-added alternative, despite the added 1.95% fee. Buyers should place two side-by-side Ribbon and non-Ribbon Offers to capture savings. These offers may be equal, or 5% less of each other, depending on how far the buyer wants to test the savings claimed by the program. Buyers should also fully understand all risks for backing out of a Ribbon offer before using the program. If the buyer makes only the Ribbon Offer without the non-Ribbon alternative, the added fee may simply backfire because the seller may accept another equal or lower traditional offer from another buyer.

Where does Ribbon operate?

Ribbon currently operates in select areas across New York City, Charlotte, Raleigh, Nashville, Atlanta, San Antonio.

Buying with Tomo Brokerage

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

Tomo 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.


Tomo Brokerage is a paper brokerage that operates a consumer allocation and a price fixing scheme designed to collect hidden referral fees by matching consumers with local real estate agents willing to pay it. Tomo Brokerage operates under a Texas TREC License #9010749 issued to Tomo Brokerage, Inc., 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 Tomo Brokerage Partner Agent, Tomo Brokerage is compensated by the Partner Agent with a hidden kickback, likely 25%-35% cut of their commission. The company partnered with real estate coach Tom Ferry to build out their collusion scheme with a network of independent agents across multiple states.

Tomo Brokerage Pricing

Tomo Brokerage revenue comes from the use of blanket referral agreements with random real estate brokers. Tomo Brokerage is a broker-to-broker collusion scheme that scrubs consumers' information from their mortgage operations and passes it along to a colluding broker who is willing to pay for it with a cut of their commission. Tomo Brokerage’s blanket referral agreements effectively operate on a longstanding myth that buyer agents work for free. In reality, a homebuyer can negotiate a sizable commission refund with a competitive buyer agent in 40 US states from the Buyer’s Agent Commission (typically offered at 2.5%-3% BAC) received.

Tomo Brokerage, in effect, operates as a price-fixing scheme that converts a small portion of the kickback they receive into "perks." Tomo dangles these "perks" as carrots in front of consumers, currently fixed at an interest rate set discount at 0.125% if customers use a Tomo Brokerage Partner Agent. These “perks” savings, in reality, are dismal, compared to thousands in kickbacks received by Tomo for the act of pay-to-play steering. In this scheme, consumers end up giving up an opportunity to receive massive amounts of cash rebates (thousands or tens of thousands depending on the overall home price) available to them in the open market from highly competitive agents who offer in legitimate tax-free buyer’s cash refunds to compete for homebuyers’ business.

Listing Services

  • This Service Does Not Represent Sellers

Buyer's Agent Services

  • This Service Does Not Represent Buyers

Tomo Editor's Review:

Tomo claims to be a different consumer-focused company, but in reality, it is in of the worst VC-backed real estate pay-to-play consumer steering schemes. For consumers, Tomo Brokerage promises a real estate agent “concierge” platform for top local real estate agents. By gathering consumers’ home preferences and budgets while shopping for a mortgage with Tomo Mortgage, Tomo Brokerage scrubs users’ information and feeds it into their limited pay-to-play network of real estate brokers. According to Tomo's website Privacy Policy, they sell consumers’ information to any number of other services. This pay-to-play dynamic is unlikely to represent the consumer’s best options. Whoever pays Tomo some form of kickbacks, in effect, is who they pass consumers’ information to:

“In some circumstances, we share your information with third parties not owned by or co-branded with Tomo Mortgage that benefit directly from our sharing your information with them.”

Tomo Mortgage may even sell consumers’ information to competing lenders:

“Third-party lenders. If Tomo Mortgage cannot finance your home, we may share your personal information with one of our partner lenders.”

Tomo further may attempt to sell consumers’ information to random home insurance companies:

“Home insurance agencies. If your real estate transaction is such that you may need homeowners insurance, we may share your information with homeowners insurance agencies and those agencies may reach out to you directly to offer you a quote.”

For real estate professionals, Tomo Brokerage promises a “no upfront costs” lead generation by scrubbing consumers’ information when they shop for their mortgage. Once a potential homebuyer is identified, a Tomo Brokerage initiates a transfer to the Partner Agent. Tomo Brokerage representatives give Partner Agents all the background information on the homebuyer to make the transition.

In other words, Tomo Brokerage is a consumer allocation scheme between licensed real estate brokers 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. If a broker is unwilling to give a portion of their commission to Tomo Brokerage, the company has no interest in recommending them. Tomo Brokerage further takes no responsibility for any of the actions of the brokers that they allocate to consumers.

In effect, Tomo Brokerage is a self-serving scheme designed to funnel consumers toward brokers who pay them a hidden kickback at the close of consumers’ transactions. Consumers using Tomo Brokerage 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 kickbacks.

Tomo attempts to present this pay-to-play scheme differently:

"Tomo Brokerage only works with Partner Agents that meet its high standards of customer-centric service, and they have to be experts in the areas you want to live in. They help you hone in your search criteria, find great homes, negotiate a great deal, and navigate the entire process. They can also help you identify qualified professionals to put the finishing touches on your new home."

These claims are entirely false. Tomo Brokerage only works with brokers who pay them kickbacks. These agents engage in consumer allocation with Tomo Brokerage. The act of consumer allocation between licensed brokers is a prohibited practice in the United States, by the virtue of the Sherman Antitrust Act. Tomo Brokerage Partner Agents are unlikely to have consumers' best interests, and, because they have to pay a kickback, they do not earn their full commissions. In effect, these agents work for consumers half the time, and for Tomo, the other half.

Even considering the overall dishonesty, kickbacks, and legal implications of the scheme, a consumer can technically still use Tomo Mortgage and freely negotiate a competitive buyer refund elsewhere on the open market with any agent.

There are honest and competitive buyer agents who are willing to share a cut of their commissions with consumers, as a legitimate way to earn business, rather than paying hidden kickbacks to Tomo Brokerage. Tomo Mortgage does not require consumers to use Tomo Brokerage, but it instead dangles an interest rate discount (set at 0.125%) so that homebuyers think that there are savings available to them. Tomo Brokerage's hidden kickbacks cost consumers thousands in properly negotiated fees while funneling hidden fees back into the scheme itself. These hidden kickbacks, eventually, reside in consumers’ mortgages and collect interest.

Price Fixing with Tomo Perks

Broker compensation fees must never be fixed via agreements between two or more brokers anywhere in the United States. All commissions and rebates must be set by each real estate agent individually and may only be negotiable between the consumer and the real estate agent. Buyer agents never work for free.

Genuine quality and honest real estate professionals establish pricing for their services independently, and without any kickbacks. The truth is, every single agent is different, and every single agent has an individual commission structure. If an agent is unwilling to negotiate competitive buyer rebate terms in compliance with the law, there is no reason for homebuyers to assume that they will be willing to negotiate competitively when it comes to their home purchase.

In combination, Tomo Mortgage and Tomo Brokerage terms equate to price fixing rates of independent real estate professionals who do not work for either one of these entities. Price fixing between independent business entities is a felony everywhere in the United States.

Tomo Perks Terms and Conditions

Subject to the following terms and conditions, customers who buy a home with Tomo Mortgage and a Tomo Brokerage Partner Agent qualify for Tomo Perks, which lowers their mortgage interest rate by 0.125%:

Tomo Brokerage Partner Agent. The customer must be party to a fully executed home purchase contract that identifies a Tomo Brokerage Partner Agent as their real estate agent, and Tomo Brokerage must have a record of referring the customer to the Partner Agent.

Tomo. The customer must purchase the home referenced above using a mortgage loan from Tomo with a loan amount of at least $150,000.

Rate Lock. The Tomo Perks interest rate reduction will be applied when the customer locks in their interest rate.

Modification. Tomo may modify the terms of Tomo Perks, but when it does so they will be modified only for customers who entered into purchase contracts after the date the program terms were modified.

Consumer Allocation

Tomo Brokerage is a broker-to-broker collusion scheme. All Partner Agents agree to pay Tomo Brokerage a pre-arranged referral fee, on all closed transactions, through their employing broker. A referral agreement between Tomo Brokerage and a Partner Agent for a random transaction that may or may not happen sometime in the future is executed in advance.

Tomo Brokerage engages in consumer and market allocation agreements 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 Tomo Brokerage, Inc. will not compete with them. Tomo Brokerage 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 Antitrust 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 benefit 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 Antitrust 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 NOT to engage in the Tomo Brokerage “no upfront costs” scheme are harmed as well because consumers are steered away from them in a highly competitive real estate market.

Kickbacks and Unearned Fees

RESPA, among other things, is designed to prohibit abusive practices such as kickbacks and referral fees between mortgage companies and real estate brokers.

The statutory exemption for a payment to a cooperative brokerage and referral arrangements between real estate agents and real estate brokers requires all agents to compete against one another. 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 Tomo Brokerage “paper” brokerage directly increase the costs of owning homes in the United States due to added blanket referral fees, consumer allocation practices, price fixing, and reverse completion between brokers. Partner Agents in the scheme have no incentive to compete for consumers individually with lower fees, instead, they have an incentive to compete for Tomo Brokerage’ attention. In this scheme, both colluding parties benefit from offering consumers higher commissions. Tomo Brokerage 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.

Similar attempts to by-pass RESPA prohibition against kickbacks by means operating a paper brokerage in a combination with services of a mortgage broker are not new. Similar schemes include:
Blend and Blend Brokerage
Better.com and Better Real Estate
HomeStory and a number of third-party lenders
Rocket Mortgage and Rocket Homes
loanDepot and mellohome
Nationstar Mortgage (dba Mr. Cooper) and Xome
and possibly some others. CFPB is currently investigating at least one of these schemes, Rocket Homes, and consumers must exercise great care to protect themselves in the meantime. A real estate home purchase is one of the most important transactions and it must be free from hidden kickbacks and self-steering.

In the real world, Tomo Mortgage and Tomo Brokerage are a single company, both designed and built with massive VC capital to rake hidden fees, by-pass RESPA, collude with independent brokers for a cut of their commissions, and openly price-fix services of others.

The entire RESPA prohibition against kickbacks was enacted specifically to stop mortgage companies from entering into “symbiotic relationships” with real estate brokers. Tomo Brokerage may seem like a clever by-pass of RESPA’s prohibition against kickbacks, but this loophole is built entirely on the use of blanket referral agreements between brokers designed to restrain free trade.

As an active licensed brokerage, Tomo Brokerage owes absolutely no duty of care to consumers, takes no responsibility for the transaction, and does not help consumers to buy homes - all despite receiving a direct financial benefit from the home purchase completed by the homebuyer.

Where does Tomo operate?

Tomo currently operates in select areas across Dallas-Fort Worth, TX, Houston, TX, Seattle, WA.