WARNING: Unlawful Kickbacks, Broker-to-Broker Collusion, False Marketing, Wire Fraud, Price Fixing.
Sold.com 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.
Sold.com is a referral fee network designed to collect fees by matching consumers with local real estate agents willing to participate. Sold.com operates as a licensed real estate brokerage in California under BRE License #01937601, but it does not produce any services that are typically offered by real estate agents and does not represent consumers when selling real estate in any State.
When consumers submit information to Sold.com, this information is simply sold to real estate agents who are willing to pay for it with a 30% share of their commission.
Sold.com revenue comes from referral fees.
On paper, Sold.com seems to have a great idea – to provide its users with the best way to sell a home, but in reality, it is a referral network designed to steer consumers toward agents and other services willing to pay a cut of their commission back into the network.
Sold.com states that it is an “unbiased” and consumer-focused service, but the actual model turns out to be much less effective - Sold.com is a California licensed real estate broker that collects a 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, Sold.com applies this pay-to-play bias towards all matching results, meaning, only real estate agents that have agreed to pay a referral fee are displayed in match results for consumers.
Sold.com audits all transactions because it needs to find out how much money real estate agents receive in commissions, inevitably collecting private details of consumer’s agreement for home purchase or sale.
Sold.com plays fees down to consumers - it states directly that the service is 100% free, but at the same time, it rigidly locks every participating real estate agent into 30% referral fee attached to the back-end of every contract. 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 this process works under the Business and Professions Code and RESPA.
Clearly, real estate agents only sign-up with Sold.com because the price of the referral fee can be easily incorporated into their client's agreement with excessive commissions. Sold.com receives the second lowest score because this service is clearly biased and it claims to provide the complete opposite of what it actually does.
Update: on September 29, 2021, SOLD.com (operated by Ten-X Finance, Inc. 'shell' real estate brokerage CA DRE License 01937601) has originated a request to the editor asking for this review to be removed.
The following is a pdf link to the notice originated by SOLD.com, dated September 29, 2021.
The following is a pdf link to the reply written by the editor of this review, dated December 13, 2021.
How real estate referral fees work
Purplebricks offers consumers flat fee listing savings and buyer’s refunds for select cities in California, New York, Connecticut, Nevada, Arizona, Florida, and New Jersey.
As of October 2019, Purplebricks no longer offers real estate representation services to consumers in the United States.
Purplebricks is a consumer-focused flat fee real estate broker. As a listing agent, Purplebricks works with a seller to prepare homes for listing, including taking professional photos, pricing home, and publishing marketing materials.
Purplebricks lists all homes on the local MLS as well as typical MLS Aggregators. Sellers don't have to pay anything until the property is sold or until 6 months have elapsed. In the unlikely event that the property hasn't sold after 6 months, Purplebricks will still market the property until it is sold.
Purplebricks maintains a well-designed online platform that allows sellers to communicate with all parties involved in a sale.
As a buyer's agent, Purplebricks works with buyers to find a home, schedule inspections, negotiate repairs and finalize the purchase.
Purplebricks offers a buyer's refund incentive of $1,000 paid at closing and it keeps the rest of the commission, typically 2.5%-3%. While Purplebricks offers great savings to sellers, the buyer’s refund policy is a bit weak - Purplebricks keeps almost all of the buyer's side commission.
It is not unusual for some agent to offer a much better 50% commission refund. Purplebricks has also suffered some initial problems entering the US market and it’s not yet clear if these have been fully resolved. For sellers, the listing fee is charged up-front and is non-refundable, although that is a very minor setback compared to thousands saved over a typical 3% sellers’ commission.
Purplebricks should be near the top of the seller’s list, but for buyers, there may be better local options. Still, $1000 buyer’s refund is better than zero refund offered by traditional buyer’s agents.
Purplebricks offers overall great value to consumers looking to buy or sell a home.