How We Don't Make Money — Aligre Perspective

If we make money when there is a sale, it would mean we aren't objective. If we made money by selling our users as leads, it means our business model is dependent on users asking to meet an agent, which would mean our financial incentive would be to guide users to do so. If we make money from a commission, same thing. In short, if Aligre made money in any way, directly or indirectly based on what the consumer does with the information we provide - the objectivity goes away.

So. We had to find another way to make money that was not based on what the consumer did with our information. We had to create a business model that wasn't dependent on the consumer buying or selling a home. Our goal couldn't be a transaction. Our goal had to be helping you make the right decision. And the only way to do that, was to make objectivity our product.

We had to change the entire business model, to create an entirely new product category:

Objective real estate guidance.

To do this, we sat with every historic way a real estate company gets paid and asked ourselves one question: if we make money this way, is the guidance on the platform still objective? If the answer was no, that revenue source was out. Not "out for now." Out.

That is not a slogan we came up with after the fact. It's not something our marketing department slapped on an Instagram post. It is the moral value we built our entire business around. We believe that people deserve guidance that is in their best interest. Objectivity is not a value we added to a business model because it sounds nice. The business model was designed around objectivity, because that is what we believe in. We sold our houses, quit our jobs, and poured our life savings into a company that provides what we feel everyone deserves:

Guidance that is in their best interest.

The business model wasn't built around making money. It was built around refusing money that compromised objective guidance. To show you just how much we mean this, here is every revenue stream / business model that we have turned down, what it would have done to you, and why we said "No".

We do not make money from commissions

The default revenue in this industry is simple: Service providers (agents and lenders) get paid a commission when people buy or sell a home. They do not get paid if people don't buy or sell, and they don't get paid to tell people to wait.

Their paycheck and their livelihood is dependent on a sale. This is not any individual's fault; it's the reality of how the system was set up over 100 years ago. The agents and lenders of today are working in a system they didn't design, and they provide valuable and honest contributions for what the system has paid them to do: assist in the buying or selling of homes. This is a necessary and critical role.

But Aligre isn't in the business of helping you buy or sell a home. We're a different service. We are here to help you understand IF you should buy or sell a home. If Aligre took a cut of the commission at closing, we couldn't honestly answer that question.

So there is no commission at Aligre. Not a big one, not a small one. No commission at all, ever. A closing does not create revenue for Aligre. If you buy, sell, or wait - we do not make money based on your decision.

We do not sell you as a lead

The second very common way companies in the real estate world make money, is selling consumers' contact information as a lead. You click "request a tour," or "more information," - and someone, somewhere, pays for the right to call you, text you, e-mail you. Sometimes you knew this call was coming, sometimes you're surprised and confused who is calling you and why.

They call this "lead generation" (or lead gen) and it's a very profitable business for the companies that engage in it. The lead generation market is large because it works. People buy your information, and they make more on the commissions they earn than they spent on the right to contact you. The problem with this is a couple things:

You may never have understood that your information was going to be shared/sold
You may not want to hear from anyone, or deal with the follow up
You may not be ready, and the outreach isn't useful to anyone
You may be ready, but already have someone you're working with
It incentivizes these companies to share your information with whoever will pay for it

We do not sell you as a lead. Why? First, because that's not cool. And two, because if we sell your information when we think you're "ready" to buy or sell - what does that mean for our business? It would mean we make money when you're "ready." Which would mean that our business is dependent on people being "ready." That would compromise our ability to be objective (which is, you know, the entire point of our platform), so, no - we do not sell you as a lead. To anyone. Not a lender, not an agent, not a financial advisor or insurance professional. No one.

We do not sell you as a lead to anyone. Ever.

Lead gen is a multi-billion-dollar industry. And we don't want one dollar of it. Never have, never will.

We do not rank the agent who paid us highest

Portals learned they could charge professionals for placement below a listing and call the results a "match." The consumer sees a face that they think is the "best" agent for them. They do not understand that the agent they're seeing is there because they paid the most for the placement on the consumer's screen.

If the best agent for you is the one who bought the slot, you are not being matched. You are being sold. Your attention was for sale, and the company was more than happy to sell it.

We do not do that. Why? Because it's not in your best interest.

What we will do, is introduce our users to an agent whose history and range actually fit that user's capabilities and goals. We only do this when you've asked us to. We do not charge the agent for this, we do not charge you for this, we don't charge anyone for this. At Aligre, the consumer decides if/when they meet an agent, and what information that agent has about them. That introduction is not monetized in any way. This ensures our guidance is about your best interest, not ours.

We do not get paid when a lender is in the room

Mortgage is where housing products go when they want a second revenue source that does not look like a commission. A sponsored rate. A "featured" lender. A bounty for an application. A share of the loan commission.

All of that money needs you to close a loan (purchase a home). A purchase is a transaction. If we got paid when you applied or purchased, the guidance the platform provides would become tainted.

So. We do not make money if you apply for a loan. We do not make money if you close a loan. It does not matter to us whether you go with lender A, lender B, or lender Q. Whether you buy cash, get a loan, put 3% down, or 30% down, it is all the same to us. Your decision does not impact our bottom line. Your transaction is not our business.

That is by design.

We do not charge you

There is a quieter version of the platform business: charge the user for usage. Extra scenarios. Extra properties. Extra collaborators. The good stuff behind a consumer paywall. This is how most financial management platforms operate.

But the moment that guidance has a price, is the moment it belongs only to the people who can pay for it. That is not fair. We believe everyone deserves objective guidance, not only those who have the cash to pay for it. So the consumer product is free, and it stays free. Why? Because it's the right thing to do.

We do not sell individuals' data

Aggregated data is how the company can live without charging you.

We sell anonymous population trends. 40% of city A is going to do XYZ in the next 12 months. 15% of married people want to buy a 2 bed condominium on Main St, in the $500K range. That sort of stuff. A trend is a weather report. It's a projection of what is likely to happen in a given area at a given time. This anonymous market data is the only data we sell, and it allows us to stay in business while untethering our revenue model from a transaction.

Put another way: Because we make money from anonymous trend reports, we don't have to make money from the transaction. This allows us to objectively say whether you should buy, sell or wait. Because we don't make money from any of them.

We do not take the small fees that add up

This industry is full of money that looks too small to corrupt anything. A referral to title. A cut of the moving truck bill. A preferred inspector. A "partner" insurance quote. An affiliate link on the way out of the dashboard.

What does all of that have in common? It's a backroom deal that is often not in the consumer's best interest. So, we don't do it. We do not and will not take money from anyone that would impact the guidance you receive.

We leave that pile of money on the table. Someone else can have it.

Why the refusals are the product

It would have been easy to take all that money. To do what everyone else does. Every path described above is a known market. It's a market that investors would have given us checks to pursue. Some of them are billion-dollar a year markets. We could have launched as a pretty website and called it guidance. A lot of companies do. But it's not the right thing to do.

Authenticity, for us, isn't a word on a "core values" page. It is doing what we said we would. And if we promise objective guidance, then we are going to give you objective guidance. Did it require us to change the business model entirely? Yes.

Would we do it again? Yes.

And did it result in a platform that is in the consumer's best interest? Yes.

Genuineness is doing the harder version of business when the easy version pays more. Integrity is turning down money, because doing the right thing matters.

Objectivity is what those add up to. It is not a marketing pitch. It is the reason we risked everything.

To be in business and to stay in business, we needed to monetize something. But we refused to monetize the decision, the behavior, or the closing. Our vision was to create a world where consumers could get personalized, specific, and objective guidance that had no strings attached. That was in their best interest.

So we built that. And we started with a business model engineered to protect it.

If you have ever wondered whether the advice in front of you was pushing a transaction, they probably were.

This is the company that spent its first years making sure it did not.