Compare UpNest and Trusty

Trusty fees come from Realtor commission kickbacks. All colluding buyer agents pay a 25% blanket referral fee for qualified buyers who close on any property. All colluding listing agents pay a 35% blanket referral fee for eligible sellers upon closing any home listing. All colluding Realtors pay a 10% blanket referral fee on any Trusty Exclusive Property purchased by their existing clients.

Trusty Labs, Inc. (dba Trusty, Trusty Homes) is a licensed real estate firm in the State of California License No. 01527508 operates as a "shell" broker to collect an undisclosed referral fee, set at 10% to 35% from the gross commissions, paid by all colluding Realtors in the network, aka Trusty Partner Agents. This fee is inevitably passed down to consumers in a form of inflated real estate commissions when selling or buying any home.

According to the scheme, "Many of our buyer and homeowner clients are unrepresented so we refer to active local agents to help achieve their goals. Trusty refers buy-side clients and future sellers for a standard referral fee. Referrals are prioritized based on agent participation in our network." Trusty claims to provide a Pre-MLS "service" to brokers and consumers where: "Trusty aggregates upcoming listings from homeowners and agents in your market, ensuring you don’t miss an opportunity to show your clients exciting homes that may never reach the MLS." However, this is not true. Trusty is not a marketplace, and it is not an MLS service - it is a broker like any other.

More importantly, Trusty is an active licensed real estate entity that does not engage in actual real estate broker services. Trusty 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.

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

Trusty Homes receives a low Editor's rating because this service is a biased hub-and-spoke broker-to-broker collusion scheme, that falsely claims to provide an independent and unbiased service of matching consumers with agents as well as a false listing aggregator marketplace.

Genuine Value of Pre-MLS Listings

There is, of course, genuine value in Pre-MLS listing services. Such a service allows consumers to list homes off MLS to gauge interest, gain more time on the market, and potentially avoid some of the selling costs by finding a buyer before posting a full listing on the MLS with a listing agent. At Geodoma, we highly recommend Selling Later to consumers, as one such progressive genuine service. Selling Later is a trustworthy Pre-MLS marketplace that offers full transparency to consumers. Selling Later is not a brokerage, and it is built on the solid ideals of strong privacy and consumer interests. We asked Selling Later how they describe their offering vs the Trusty Labs brokerage scheme. Here is what they told us:

"The biggest difference between Trusty Labs and Selling Later is consumer choice and public access. Trusty Labs is a pay-to-play referral program. They bait consumers with off-market properties and then profit from kickbacks paid by the network of colluding agents. Every home pre-listed on Selling Later is visible to the general public. The only time we request someone to create an account is when they want to message a home seller, and that is solely to prevent solicitation. Selling Later is 100% seller choice, we help educate consumers on all options and then let them decide how and when to sell based on what works best for them."

Selling Later continues to say, "Trusty Labs is no different than any other shell brokerage, where the seller is essentially being used as bait to bring in buyers who are sold as leads to random third-party agents. With Trusty, the seller has fewer buyers looking at the home, fewer offers, and everyone will likely pay higher Realtor commissions due to hidden kickbacks vs listing a home on the MLS with a competitive agent."

Damages of Broker-to-Broker Collusion

Trusty 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 licensed brokers.

Trusty plays junk fees down claiming that the kickback is "standard" and rigidly locks every participating Realtor into kickbacks with an 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. Trusty scheme operates on a false notion that all buyer agents' and listing agents' commissions are the same, where no Realtor in the Trusty scheme truly competes for consumers on pricing.

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, Trusty 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. Trusty shell entity 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. Trusty 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.

Trusty 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 dishonest Realtors 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.

In reality, Trusty is a 100% biased, pay-to-play collusion steering mechanism between licensed brokers, that costs consumers tens of thousands compared in inflated commissions compared to open market savings. Trusty specifically steers consumers into the network in exchange for massive kickbacks pre-negotiated in advance. Trusty operates on false notions that "buyer agents work for free" and that all commissions are "standard" to justify a "standard" referral fee.

There are numerous reasons why consumers are wise to avoid the Trusty scheme, but probably the most important reason is that the lack of transparency and honesty is contagious. Trusty scheme attracts ONLY double-dealing Realtors who are willing to break a host of federal antitrust 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 Trusty Engage in Collusion?

Plain agreements among competitors to divide sales territories or assign customers are almost always illegal. These arrangements are essentially agreements not to compete.

Trusty engages in consumer allocation because it is an active real estate entity that refuses to compete with other real estate agents who patriciate in the scheme. This dynamic is better known as a hub-and-spoke conspiracy. In a hub-and-spoke type conspiracy, all Realtor commissions are set at the same amount for all Realtors, where none of the "partner agents" compete with one another on pricing at all. Trusty 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 collude with Trusty shell brokerage.

The illicit kickback is the reason why Trusty colludes with Realtors outside their firm. ALL consumers and ALL legitimate Realtors are scammed by Trusty, even if the experience may seem "good enough" because collusion is a faulty shortcut to genuine open competition between Realtors. Federal laws require all Realtors to compete for consumers and to deliver a tangible service, a simple test Trusty brokerage entity decisively fails. 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." Trusty is a direct extension of these uncompetitive, unethical, and unlawful notions. ALL Realtors who participate in the Trusty scheme are engaged in plain collusion, where each Realtor knows that Trusty shell brokerage will not compete at all, in exchange for a blanket kickback from the home sale or a home purchase. 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 for each count. Persons found guilty of wire fraud under federal law face fines up to $250,000 for individuals and up to $500,000 for organizations, subject to imprisonment of not more than 20 years. There are additional penalties of 30 years imprisonment and a million-dollar fine if the wire fraud involves a financial institution. These penalties are per count, which means that each electronic communication can be considered as a separate count. 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 collusion because it is a felony that carries massive penalties. The best Realtors can recognize collusion as wrong because they respect the true value of honest negotiations.

When Trusty refuses to compete with these brokers and instead organizes "partner agents" into a network, it breaks an entire host of basic open commerce principles that guide our open and fair markets. Moreover, Trusty extends this conspiracy all across the United States via its website, making the scheme highly damaging due to the scaled use of the Internet to transmit collusion. The Internet, like any other scaled telecommunications medium, can be used to transmit open competition just as easily as pay-to-play fraud.

Most consumers do not know that Trusty Labs is a licensed real estate brokerage because the nature of the scheme requires this information to be deliberately hidden. The Trusty Homes scheme is built entirely on false advertising to deliberately deceive consumers by offering them services of finding homes as a Pre-MLS listing aggregator. This shell broker presents itself as an unbiased marketplace, but it is a real estate broker that engages in unlawful activities under federal laws. The short answer is: Trusty's intent to allocate consumers as a secret real estate shell entity is directly tied to 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.