At Aligre, objectivity is the product. Guidance is only in your best interest if we have no vested interest in the outcome.

At Aligre, objectivity is the product. Guidance is only in your best interest if we have no vested interest in the outcome.

Nico Lang

CEO & Cofounder

5 min read

How Aligre Makes Money

Aligre Perspective

How Aligre Makes Money

How Aligre Makes Money

How Aligre Makes Money

Your transaction is not our business. Here is exactly how Aligre stays free for consumers and gets paid without ever touching your decision.

Your transaction is not our business. Here is exactly how Aligre stays free for consumers and gets paid without ever touching your decision.

Your transaction is not our business.

If you use Aligre as a consumer, you will never get a bill. Not this year. Not the next one. Not when you buy. Not when you sell. Not when you wait. The product you see - the answer to if, when, and how - is free, and it stays free.

It can be free because we refuse to get paid the way this industry usually does. It can be free because we changed the business model.

How we don't make money

Real estate already knows how to charge you. A commission when you close. A referral fee when your name is handed to someone. A lead fee when your tour request becomes a phone number in a queue. A kickback dressed up as a partnership. All of that money exists because someone, somewhere, needs you to transact.

Not us.

We will not take it. Not directly. Not indirectly. Not "just this once" on a lender introduction. Not a cut of a commission. Not a bounty for sending you to an agent you did not ask for.

We spent a long time on that list. Before we decided how Aligre would get paid, we decided how it would not. That was the actual work. The industry is full of ways to monetize your housing decision. Almost every one of them quietly turns the guidance into a funnel towards a sale.

Not us.

At Aligre, objectivity is the product. Guidance is only in your best interest if we have no vested interest in the outcome. If we get paid when you move, we do not have a product.

So we will leave that money on the table. All of it. Millions, if that is what it costs. Billions, if the industry's leading platforms' ledgers are any indication. The principle is not a brand line. It is the business. The minute we get paid for the transaction, the answer on the screen has a conflict. We will not ship that answer.

How we make money

Two things. Neither of them is you buying or selling a house.

The first is a subscription from real estate professionals. Agents - and later, lenders - can pay for their own dashboard, Aligre+. It is not a bag of leads. It is not money in exchange for your file.

An agent can invite people they already know onto Aligre. If you're invited by an agent, you decide what happens next. You can collaborate with that agent, pick a different one, or use Aligre with no agent attached. That choice is yours at signup and yours to change.

If you choose to collaborate, you also choose what they can see. An Aligre+ agent only sees what you explicitly share - typically whether you are exploring buying or selling, and roughly when. They do not see your financials, or anything you did not turn on. Paying for Aligre+ does not give agents access to your information. It unlocks the ability to collaborate with you, if you choose to allow it.

Some people will choose to collaborate with an agent. Some will not. Either way, every consumer tool on Aligre stays available and stays free. A lender subscription, when it exists, will work the same way: their dashboard, your permission, and always in your control.

The second is anonymous trend data. Not your name. Not your address. Not your phone number. Not your income. Not your credit score. Not a list of people who looked at a house last week. Trends. Aggregates. The shape of a market when enough households are on the platform that you can say something true without saying anything about any one individual.

That kind of information is valuable to people who plan - builders deciding what to put on the ground, researchers, public agencies, institutions that study demand. They do not need to know who you are. They need to know what a market is doing. We will sell that weather report. We will never sell the household inside it.

If a company wants a name, a number, a lead, a "warm handoff," or a file they can call on Tuesday, the answer is no. We do not sell personal information. We do not sell financial information. We do not sell you.

Not to an agent. Not to a lender. Not to an insurance salesperson. Not to anyone.

Why this is the only model that matches the product

The thing missing from real estate is objective guidance. It is guidance that can tell a consumer "You should wait." Almost every other check in this industry gets smaller when you wait. Ours cannot and does not work that way.

So we separated the two jobs the industry has historically glued together: Advisor and Service Provider. Guidance is our job (Advisor). Transaction assistance still comes from agents or lenders (Service Provider). You get guidance from us for free, on purpose. This ensures objectivity. And when you're ready, you can use the service provider (agent/lender) of your choice. That's not our business because your transaction isn't our business.

Literally.

As a company, we needed to monetize something, but we refused to monetize you.

If you have ever wondered if you can, if you have ever wondered if you should - Aligre is for you.

We are the information you've been looking for. We can say that because we do not get paid when you use it.