Compare Sold.com and homegenius

homegenius takes a hidden kickback set at 30% of the gross commission income received by colluding Realtor via MLS from the Buyer Agent Commission (BAC) amount typically offered at 2.5% to 3% of the home purchase via local MLS. The kickback is paid after the price-fixed 0.50% buyer rebate is paid out to the homer buyer by a colluding Realtor.

homegenius Real Estate of Florida LLC is a licensed real estate entity in the State of Florida License No. CQ1057661 operates as a "shell" broker to collect an undisclosed referral fee, set at 30% from the gross commissions paid by all colluding Realtors in the network. This fee is inevitably passed down to consumers in a form of inflated real estate commissions when either buying or selling a home.

More importantly, homegenius is a licensed real estate entity that does not engage in actual real estate broker services. homegenius systematically applies pay-to-play bias towards all Realtor matching results, meaning, only Realtors that have agreed to collude and pay a referral fee are matched with consumers.

Realtors only sign-up with homegenius because the price of the referral fee can be easily incorporated into their client's agreement with excessive commissions.

homegenius receives a low Editor's rating because this service is a biased hub-and-spoke broker-to-broker collusion scam, that falsely claims to provide an independent and unbiased service of matching consumers with agents.

homegenius operates on a pay-to-play methodology to collect junk fees that needlessly make home buying and selling more expensive. In this scheme, consumers are no longer in the driver's seat, but instead, are traded as a commodity between brokers.

homegenius plays junk fees down, claiming there are "no upfront costs" to Realtors and the service is "free" to consumers, but it rigidly locks every participating Realtor into a kickback attached to the back-end of every agreement that restrains free trade. As a licensed real estate entity that doesn’t perform any real estate services or take any responsibility for the transaction, this scheme operates to unlawfully allocate consumers and bypass RESPA anti-kickback regulations through a "shell" entity.

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, anticompetitive market allocation, price-fixing, lack of competition, limited choices to consumers, unnecessary high commissions, and improperly negotiated fees. A referring broker in this scheme does not compete with referred brokers, instead, homegenius administers a series of agreements that restrain free trade, disguised as Realtor matching services.

12 C.F.R. § 1024.14(g)(1)(v) (Regulation X) and RESPA 12 U.S.C. § 2607(c)(3) narrowly allow payments pursuant to cooperative brokerage and referral arrangements between real estate agents and real estate brokers. This limited exemption on kickbacks only applies to fee divisions within real estate brokerage arrangements when all parties are acting in a real estate brokerage capacity. homegenius does not act in a brokerage capacity, in fact, this entity willfully chooses to disengage from offering real estate representation services to consumers, as the core premise to create successful collusion through interstate wire communication to further the scheme. Wire fraud is financial fraud involving the use of any telecommunications or information technology.

Real estate transaction is a rare, high-value, and high-risk-aversion experience that is easily subjected to unlawful kickbacks, especially with the use of the Internet. Consumers are often subjected to high commissions and hidden referral fees without a full understanding that these fees increase their commissions and result in a lower quality of service. Whenever any double-dealing Realtor agrees to pay these massive kickbacks, he or she is unable to offer full and competitive representation services to anyone. homegenius does not cater to honest Realtors, it only caters to Realtors willing to cheat their clients out of full services, and willing to share private information about their clients' transactions with the scheme.

homegenius antitrust and consumer protection violations are not harmless. Realtors who attempt to compete for consumers on fair terms and competitive pricing are at a massive disadvantage in this environment. As a result of broker-to-broker collusion, consumers end up getting steered toward a limited pool of agents and overpay for commissions. Consumers’ private transaction information is always shared with a referring broker that requires it to be disclosed to calculate the referral fees to be paid at the close of each transaction.

Consumers, of course, pay for this abuse with higher costs of commissions that, eventually, make it directly into their new mortgages and cause significant losses of net equity from a home sale.

homegenius is a subsidiary of Radian Group Inc. (NYSE: RDN) where the parent company attempts to use the shell broker as a channel to earn kickbacks from mortgage, mortgage insurance, title, and settlement services. homegenius, effectively, sells Radian's "high intent customers" to random colluding brokers to earn additional kickbacks from these services.

A typical broker-to-broker collusion scheme often attempts to fool consumers with heavily advertised campaigns on Google, Nextdoor, Facebook, or local radio and TV. Such a false ad might read: "Unbiased. Get Data-Driven Results. Our Agents Can Get You the Best Deals. Sign Up Now! Save Time & Hassle and Get Matched to the Perfect Agent for Your Needs. Find Quality Realtors. Top Agent Rankings. Personalized & Fast. 100% Free. Top 1% of Real Estate Agents Compete to Sell Your Home. No Obligation. Save Thousands."

In reality, all such "matches" are 100% biased, pay-to-play collusion steering mechanisms between licensed brokers, and they all cost consumers tens of thousands compared to open market savings. These "paper" brokers do not connect consumers with anyone outside the network, in fact, they specifically steer consumers into the network in exchange for massive kickbacks pre-negotiated in advance.

There are numerous reasons why consumers are wise to avoid the homegenius scheme, but probably the most important reason is that the lack of transparency and honesty is contagious. homegenius scheme only attracts double-dealing Realtors who are willing to break a host of federal laws, and unwilling to compete for consumers with transparency. An unethical Realtor will always find a way to turn the most important transaction into a self-dealing proposition - to collect a bigger commission check faster without any regard for what is truly a good deal for their clients.

Why Does homegenius Engage in Price-Fixing?

Whatever economic justification particular price-fixing agreements may be thought to have, the law does not permit an inquiry into their reasonableness. They are all banned.

If the consumer uses homegenius scheme to buy a $1 million home, homegenius offers them a "carrot" of a price-fixed buyer rebate of $5,000 while secretly pocketing a 30% kickback from the colluding "partner agent" in the amount of $7,500. That is correct, a consumer receives one and a half times less the money than what homegenius takes as a kickback in this scheme. Without the kickback, a consumer can easily receive as much as $12,500 as a tax-free cash rebate in a form of competitive commissions. The price of the scam is the difference between $12,500 and $5,000 as a result of price fixing. The homegenius scam uses a shell Florida real estate brokerage to price fix rebates in the amount almost three times less than the open market allows for.

homegenius engages in price-fixing because it needs a "dangling carrot in front of consumers" to "reasonably" justify the kickbacks it takes from the Realtors who patriciate in the scheme. This dynamic is better known as a hub-and-spoke conspiracy. In a hub-and-spoke conspiracy, all rebates are set at the same amount for all Realtors, where none of the "partner agents" compete with one another on pricing at all. homegenius scheme produces absolutely no tangible service as a licensed broker to anyone and instead delivers inflated prices and lower quality of service. The scheme originates as a conspiracy to restrain trade and to funnel consumers toward the scheme and away from the open market. There are hundreds of thousands of highly competitive Realtors who offer great savings and great service, and they refuse to pay kickbacks or to comply with the price fixed rates set by homegenius.

The kickback is the reason why homegenius sets listing commission rates and buyer rebates for Realtors outside their firm. ALL consumers and ALL legitimate Realtors are scammed by homegenius, even if the experience and savings may seem "good enough" because price-fixing is a faulty shortcut to genuine open competition between Realtors. By law, all Realtors must compete for consumers and set prices individually. Open competition is at the core of our free and independent society everywhere in America.

The Realtor commissions in the United States have long suffered from the "standard" 6% myth and the false notion that "buyer agents work for free." However, these myths cannot be resolved with price-fixing of commissions to some other level, in exchange for kickbacks. ALL Realtors who participate in the homegenius scheme are engaged in price-fixing. The Sherman Act imposes criminal penalties of up to $100 million for a corporation and $1 million for an individual, along with up to 10 years in prison. No legitimate Realtor will ever willingly allow themselves to be exposed to such massive liability.

The best, highly-experienced, well-educated, law-abiding, honest, and ethical Realtors will never participate in price-fixing because it is a felony that carries massive penalties. The best Realtors can recognize price-fixing as wrong because they respect the true value of honest negotiations.

The prices set by homegenius are not for the services that they offer, but for services offered by their direct competitors – other brokers. When homegenius refuses to compete with these brokers and instead organizes "partner agents" into a network, it breaks an entire host of basic principles that guide our open and fair markets. Moreover, homegenius extends this conspiracy all across the United States, making the scheme highly damaging due to the scaled use of the Internet to transmit collusion. The Internet, like any other scaled information medium, can be used to transmit competition just as easily as fraud and collusion.

The short answer is: homegenius's intent to fix prices is directly tied into the kickbacks it receives from the "partner agents." This dynamic is a product of the restraint of genuine competition. The "standard commissions" problem in the residential real estate sector can only be fixed legally by encouraging Realtors to set and advertise competitive prices to consumers at scale without paying any kickbacks.