For decades, the real estate transaction—with full-service agents and relatively stable commission rates—has been one of the most consistent fixtures of the American housing market. Sellers built it into their expectations, buyers believed in it, and agents themselves defended both the fees and the model as pro-consumer.
But now, the traditional real estate agent structure—and commission—is under siege from multiple fronts, as entrepreneurs, attorneys, educators and consumer advocates push for alternative models that claim to save buyers and sellers thousands of dollars in commission.
The timing couldn’t be more charged. The National Association of Realtors®’ (NAR) landmark settlement and ongoing class-action lawsuits have pulled back the curtain on how commissions are negotiated and who really pays for them.
In that tension, a new wave of disruptors has emerged, each challenging the premise that home sales and a traditional agent (with a traditional commission rate) go hand in hand. From AI-powered platforms to name-your-price and flat-fee brokerages, legal advocates and DIY-educators, these companies all share a common thesis: consumers can take more control over one of the largest purchases in their lives, often without the assistance of agents.
For many consumers, the shift could be driven by economics. Home prices have soared, mortgage rates remain high and affordability has plummeted. But can any of these new models replace the expertise—or even basic services—provided by an agent? And are buyers or sellers willing to try something new, in the biggest transaction of their lives?
@realtorshateme’s AI solution
When Ridley’s founder, Mike Chambers, decided to sell his $2.725 million Colorado home, he faced a frustrating reality: even as a “For Sale by Owner” (FSBO) seller, he still had to pay an agent’s commission just to get his home on the MLS.
“They all want north of 2.5%, and not a single one can tell me why they deserve tens of thousands of dollars to basically just take photos and open doors,” he explained in a now-viral Instagram Reel. “The truth is, they probably don’t…Realtors® provide a service, but not every single seller needs the full package. The problem is the system forces everyone to pay for it, whether or not they need it.”
His viral videos—through a username that has garnered quite the attention, @realtorshateme—clarified that he would be offering a 2% buyer’s agent commission, in order to incentivize agents to bring clients to his home. Fast forward a bit, and Chambers accepted an offer on his home. Fast forward a bit more, and Chambers pulled out of this deal, and the point he tried to prove through @realtorshateme—selling a house on his own in Colorado.
After staying in his Colorado home, Chambers shifted his energy into starting Ridley—a business to solve the same problem he started with—helping people sell and buy homes without agents.
“I realized there was a product that I wished existed when I started, and so I decided to build that product. We raised a little bit of money and pulled together a team to build Ridley,” Chambers told RISMedia. “The vision for Ridley is to use AI to guide consumers through this process of initially selling their home, eventually buying their home—while giving them the ability to call on expert support for the aspects of the process that they might want a little extra help with.”
The platform launched in Colorado on July 15 and is now available nationwide. It uses AI to guide consumers through the home-selling journey while offering access to Ridley’s preferred agents and legal services for help with specific parts of the process, charging between $50 and around $5,000 as a flat fee.
Chambers tells RISMedia that currently, it’s “about 50/50” for customers who choose to use agents versus relying entirely on the Ridley tech platform. The company claims over $40 million in closed transactions since its launch.
Though Ridley itself is a technology company, Chambers said they also have a “wholly-owned brokerage subsidiary.” The company trains agents from other brokerages “on the Ridley process,” Chambers says, and are paid by Ridley regardless of whether the transaction closes, working around three hours a week.
Tapping into Ridley’s preferred agents, for help with specific aspects of the process, is currently only available in Colorado through Ridley’s Pro version.
“The mission with that (Pro) tier is sort of unbundling this service that’s traditionally all or nothing and giving sellers the ability to choose what type of help they want, where, and only pay for the service that they’re actually getting,” Chambers adds. “We basically have a brokerage that has insurance for the sellers who are getting some representation by agents.”
Replacement tech
Ridley is hardly the first company to claim it can handle the real estate transaction process using technology. Chambers says that Ridley’s AI system knows exactly where sellers are in the process, has access to local market data and can retrieve information for MLS and listing forms.
But Chambers is also explicit in saying that Ridley’s AI “is not programmed to perform or replace any licensed brokerage functions” and the whole program is meant to “serve purely as an educational and informational resource.” At the same time, Chambers has publicly promoted Ridley as being able to help “everyday people” sell a home without an agent, utilizing the power of AI.
So how useful, accurate and detailed is the AI program Ridley is relying on? RISMedia tested out the most basic “Insights” plan, which seeks to offer the kind of market analysis and customized pricing advice that agents traditionally provide.
While quickly providing detailed, market-specific information including comparable homes and three pricing strategies (complete with estimates on time to close), the Ridley AI also made errors—contradicting the service’s own analysis on list-to-sale price data for the city in question, and providing different numbers for what an “aggressive” listing price should be without explanation. The AI also incorrectly stated that a lawyer was not legally required to be involved in the closing where the property was listed.
Chambers described this last error as a bug, which would be fixed “immediately.”
“We have very strict rails around legal advice in the model and disclaim the entire chat that it is not a substitute for legal, professional and other professional advice,” he said, adding that the state in question was not labeled as one requiring attorneys, but would be going forward.
Ridley AI seemed to perform best answering questions on basic real estate topics—staging strategies, marketing tips and how to write a listing description. The platform also offers an intuitive and simple process for creating an online listing, with a website that at least for some properties, showed up on the first page of Google when searching the property’s address.
But it also consistently deferred to human experts, pointing to the company’s concierge service that connects customers with vendors when asked basic questions about contingencies, financing, market trends or disclosures.
When asked what market data the system had access to, Ridley AI disclosed that it was not able to access a full dataset of sales or home characteristics in the local market—rather, it was looking at eight comparable properties provided by a separate automated valuation system, and a handful of other pre-provided datapoints for inventory, sales price and time on market. That means the system couldn’t answer any more granular or current questions—related to pending or active listings, recent sales volume or neighborhood-specific trends.
But datapoints are updated in real time, with list-to-sale price ratios, inventory and days-to-contract metrics refreshed weekly, though the AI seemed to be relying on slightly different numbers, offering different metrics from Ridley’s dashboard.
RISMedia asked the Ridley AI what topics it could not share advice on. It answered that it would “defer to licensed professionals” on legal contracts, state-specific regulation and compliance, “complex” title or ownership disputes, tax implications of a sale, appraisal services and “situations requiring fiduciary representation.” It was able to answer some questions about land-use restrictions and local taxes, but mostly recommended outside experts or services.
Pricing and presentation are the two most important factors Ridley hopes to solve, Chambers tells RISMedia. “We’re trying to arm the sellers with as many tools and data as possible—data that’s historically been gatekept behind the system—so that they can make an informed decision.”
Ridley has plans to expand to 40-plus additional states by the end of the year with their base offering, which is everything but agent support.
DIY approaches: Tools and education
Just like Chambers said, “not every single seller needs the full package.” Other companies claim to offer buyers just what they need to navigate transactions on their own—some through technology platforms and others through coaching and education.
OfferHaus takes a straightforward approach by supporting buyers to handle transactions themselves through a simple subscription model. Founded a year ago by Lanbin Ren, an agent and real estate investor, and Jon Penneman, who comes from the technology industry, the platform emerged post-NAR settlement, which served as a major inspiration for Ren and Penneman to set out and do things differently.
“With the NAR lawsuit, the customers realized, ‘Okay, we can negotiate, or let’s not do it at all,’ so you can save tens of thousands on commissions just by doing the paperwork yourself,” Ren explained. “So this is a platform for them.”
It’s essentially DIY real estate forms for buyers, Ren tells RISMedia. The paperwork management tool allows buyers to write offers, counteroffers and addendums all in one platform, with no agents or commissions involved. The platform charges a flat fee of $99 per month or $499 for six months for unlimited service.
The company’s primary user base is made up of investors. “We’ve had multiple investors look at a project and they realized it would not pencil out once they factored in fees at 2.5%, so around 5% for the whole project,” Penneman says. “But then they started using OfferHaus…and so they actually move forward with projects that normally they would have passed on.”
While investors are the majority, OfferHaus has also served first- and second-time homebuyers. “Usually more tech-savvy and comfortable, kind of, taking things on by themselves,” notes Penneman.
The NAR settlement created both awareness and urgency, the founders say.
“When we were first doing our research and market fit, we did see a very large uptick in search terms such as ‘buy a home without a Realtor®,’ ‘no-commission home purchases,’ things of that nature, and that has sustained ever since,” Penneman says. “I don’t want to say the NAR lawsuit was a huge catalyst for why we started, but it was, I would say, a catalyst for why we said, ‘We need to do this now.’”
Data so far has shown that so far, the vast majority of buyers and sellers still end up using an agent in the end. But companies like OfferHaus appear ready to take advantage of these new consumer inquiries, as the longer-term ramifications of the settlement are still playing out.
Ren and Penneman are careful to distinguish themselves from other emerging models. The company is not a brokerage or an AI agent, but purely a technology platform that provides forms management.
While OfferHaus provides the tools, Nick Aufenkamp focuses on building the confidence to use them. His DIY Homebuyer Academy and coaching practice grew from his own experience as a licensed agent working for a new homebuilder, where he regularly closed transactions with unrepresented buyers.
“It just created this whole plausibility structure for me, of wow, unrepresented buyers are closing on homes every day in America. Why couldn’t this be the norm?” Aufenkamp tells RISMedia.
Aufenkamp offers one-on-one coaching, an interactive online community and courses designed to help buyers navigate the process without an agent.
“I’m seeking to empower homebuyers to represent themselves without having to have a costly buyer’s agent,” he says. “It’s my core belief that most buyers do have the competence to represent themselves, but they lack the confidence.”
Just like Ren and Penneman from The OfferHaus, the NAR settlement has amplified interest in Aufenkamp’s services by making more buyers confront commission costs.
“Most buyers didn’t really bat an eye at that because of the misnomer that buyer agents are free to buyers,” he says. “With the NAR settlement and buyer agency agreements, buyers are being confronted—really for the first time in many, many years—with the true cost of having a buyer agent.”
By eliminating buyer agent commissions, Aufenkamp says his clients can reduce transaction fees by 2% or 3%, “which could make a huge difference for a lot of homebuyers.”
His community has grown to 107 members, with six members he’s led through entire transactions one-on-one . Many others have found his content on YouTube and social media and successfully represented themselves without direct coaching.
But while the numbers aren’t huge, the demographics could help show what types of buyers are looking for alternatives to the traditional full-service model. About two-thirds of the buyers he’s worked with are first-time buyers in their mid-30s to early-40s, and the other third are move-up buyers with some real estate industry background.
Their motivations, he’s found, are primarily financial.
“I’ve had a fair share of folks who are buying a $350k – $500k home, and they’ve decided to work with me, and just time and time again, like the number one thing I hear is just, ‘I don’t know that a buyer agent is providing 3% worth of value,’ and so they’re wanting to save money on their home.”
His biggest challenge—similar to when Chambers was selling his Colorado home—is overcoming the listing agent’s bias against unrepresented buyers, he says.
“There’s a lot of agents that try and bar unrepresented buyers from fair participation, and so my stance is just, ‘Hey, if we can elevate the level of education among people that are going to represent themselves…then everybody wins, right?’…My hope would be that those that come to me discontented with the industry, that I’m able to show them a different side, and that I’m able to build a bridge between listing agents and self-represented buyers.”
‘Discount brokerages’ and consumer lawyers
While Chambers is a newcomer, and DIY-buyer approaches focus on eliminating buyer’s agents entirely, Fred Glick has been fighting the commission battle through a different model for the past decade.
The founder of Arrivva, a full-service brokerage charging flat fees, launched his model in 2015—long before recent lawsuits made commission structures a national conversation.
“People like to call us discounters, so they can persuade their clients, or attempted clients, not to use us,” Glick says. “We have a fixed fee that makes sense for a client, and everybody else is overcharging them; that’s really the bottom line.”
Arrivva operates in California, Washington and Texas—and will soon relaunch in Pennsylvania. The brokerage charges sellers a flat fee of $15,750, which includes photography, drone footage, Matterport virtual tours with floor plan dimensions, all inspections and professional cleanings. For buyers, the fee is $9,750.
With Arrivva, clients save on more than just commission, says Glick.
“When we submit an offer for our clients and it’s a multiple-offer situation, the story is that we can not add in that 2.5% and get the property, usually for a lower price, which translates to lower real estate taxes and also translates to a lower mortgage,” he says. “So not only are they saving all the difference on the commission, but they’re saving on things like the interest…so the whole combination of things just makes it make sense.”
Glenn Mintzer brings a different perspective to the alternative real estate ecosystem.
A longtime litigator who spent his career fighting pharmaceutical companies and other industries on behalf of consumers, Mintzer launched Negotiate the Comp in July 2024, followed by Mintzer Legal, a practice focused on education as well—“empowering” consumers in real estate transactions.
“I’ve always been on the side of the consumer in all of my work that I’ve done,” Mintzer says.
The pair recognized a gap in consumer education after reviewing complaints in real estate industry lawsuits.
“We just wanted to see if there was a way we could help consumers understand more about the real estate process and that they did have more power than they think they do when they’re dealing with real estate agents and brokers,” he says.
His goal isn’t to eliminate agents. “I think real estate agents are valuable and have a place in the buying and selling of homes,” Mintzer says. Instead, he aims to educate consumers on the ins and outs and help them understand their contracts so they can understand what they are before signing, particularly when it comes to negotiating.
“A lot of people aren’t comfortable in negotiating on their own. They don’t feel empowered to do it…Some people think that they’re not supposed to bargain, that they’re not supposed to try and get a better deal for themselves,” he explains. “They don’t know the right arguments to come back at real estate agents with.”
Though the practice is still in its infancy, with most work so far done for friends and family, Mintzer sees a need for his services and others like his, particularly among middle-income families who may be financially unsophisticated when it comes to negotiation, but stand to benefit significantly from lower commissions.
“I think it’s Middle America, people that are busy and don’t deal with negotiations (often), which is why…it can be uncomfortable, especially when somebody presents you with a bunch of documents,” he says. “I think people are at a disadvantage, because one of the two parties does this for a living…consumers don’t have that level of education to be on an even playing field.”
Where things are headed
These alternative innovators see their models as previews of where the market may head, rather than niche alternatives.
“I hope this becomes the mainstream,” Glick from Arrivva says. He argues that traditional brokerages can’t adapt their cost structures.
“Especially after the giant Compass merger goes through, all these companies are still going to operate the absolute same way. They have physical offices that they actually go to…layers of lawyers, vice presidents, etc. So they can’t change their model. They can’t make less because they can’t make any money,” he claims.
Penneman from OfferHaus draws parallels to the established FSBO market.
“I personally think tools like ours…are going to become more mainstream as word of mouth spreads, that ‘Hey, you don’t have to pay 5% – 6%,’ or I think $15,000 is the average commission,” he says. “So I personally think that people are becoming more and more savvy and they feel like they can do it themselves.”
