With names like AgentFree and Realty Redone, the intent of these new startups seems obvious. Although this is far from the first time outsiders have sought to upend the traditional model for a real estate transaction, this time the players are people who already play a significant part in it: namely, attorneys.
To take a closer look at these latest disruptors, RISMedia spoke with the founders of two attorney-run businesses, a closing attorney as well as two agents, to better understand the model of the two firms and what they do and don’t offer buyers and sellers who only use an attorney in the transaction process.
From agent to ‘AgentFree’
Atlanta-based Geoff Friedman was an agent long before he launched AgentFree.
Through his now three-decades-long career in real estate—working as a real estate attorney, a closing attorney, residential agent and commercial real estate broker and developer—Friedman’s most recent deep dive has been with AgentFree.
The company is aimed at buyers interested in purchasing a home directly through an attorney, rather than an agent. He started this venture in August 2024 and serves as the exclusive attorney partner at AgentFree and the managing partner for The Residential Law Firm, the company executing these legal services. Through his services, Friedman takes a 1% fee of a home’s purchase price.
Though it’s in the name, he doesn’t think his platform is directly competing with the industry or agents specifically.
Having been an agent himself, Friedman stressed the value that agents bring and emphasized that AgentFree or other services like it would never replace agents. Despite the option of people not using agents and going straight to real estate attorneys, Friedman said good agents will always be in demand.
His clients are those who’ve decided not to hire an agent in the first place, he adds, with their main objective to save on commission costs.
His typical client, Friedman says, has already concluded that they want to forgo an agent and they want to do the due diligence themselves. “They’re kind of like ‘For Sale by Owner’ people, but on the buy-side,” he says.
As the exclusive attorney partner of AgentFree, Friedman drafts custom contracts that “are truly thoughtful and advocates (his clients’) position more than any form can do.” The forms that agents typically use, he says, are “watered down and boilerplate.”
So far, Friedman says he has not received any pushback from any of the parties involved. “Most of the agents that I’ve kind of been in the mix with on this have actually been happy to have an attorney involved, just kind of making sure everything is done right.”
‘Staying in his lane’
One of the first questions Friedman asks potential clients is if they’re working with an agent and whether or not they have signed a contract with them. If the answer is yes, Friedman tells them he can’t take them on as a client.
If he’s working with a client, and it’s very apparent to him that they would benefit from working with a full-service agent, Friedman says he will not step out and start acting like a real estate agent.
“I want to serve in my lane, as an attorney, so I will refer that buyer out into the agent community. I would say, ‘Listen buddy, I’m not going to go meet the inspector over there. I’m not going to go open the door for you. You have come to me concluding that you wanted to handle this yourself in an effort to save money, but you really do need a full-service agent, and I’m not the right guy for you,’” he says. “I’m not trying to be the attorney/real estate agent; I’m trying to be the attorney.”
AgentFree has attracted clients from all walks of life, Friedman says, from “highly sophisticated, wealthy professionals” to “savvy, young first-time homebuyers.”
Although Friedman previously worked as a closing attorney, he doesn’t close deals at AgentFree. For now, he is strictly representing either buyers or sellers in the drafting, negotiation and administration of their contracts, including any amendments prior to the end of due diligence. He also reviews preliminary settlement statements and title examinations before referring his clients to a closing attorney.
For buyers, he performs the drafting, negotiation and administration of their contracts. He essentially wraps everything up before referring them to a closing attorney to avoid any conflict of interest.
And though Friedman initially started AgentFree with the idea to only represent buyers, he is expanding to include sellers. Since he’s been marketing the business, he has had sellers reach out to him, saying they will take care of listing the house and conducting all the showings, saving 6%, in some cases.
Saving on commission, but losing out on market knowledge
Depending on the market you’re in, and your knowledge of it, things can become a lot more difficult without being able to rely on an agent’s knowledge, says Katie Morrison, a luxury real estate agent with Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Montana Properties in Big Sky. She points out that trying to save on a commission can lose people money—and opportunities—if they don’t have a local agent.
Since Montana is a non-disclosure state, Morrison said it’s difficult for outside buyers to come in and try to understand the process, the market and pricing—things that attorneys aren’t necessarily experts at.
“I just think it’s a challenging way to go about it, to save a few bucks, because you could save a lot more if you work with an agent who really knows the market, to find exactly what you want,” she says. “A lot of times when people go that route—a friend of mine uses this expression, ‘They’re tripping over dollars to pick up pennies.’”
Moreso, since Morrison’s market is primarily a second-home market, the logistics of viewing a property, getting an inspector in, etc., is all the more difficult.
“An attorney is going to handle the transaction for you, but they’re not going to arrange all of that,” she says. “If you need an electrician to fix something prior to closing, or if you need to know insurance company requirements—those types of things. Maybe an attorney in Montana would, but that’s kind of out of their scope of what they would typically be doing.”
The times she has worked with real estate attorneys, they have been in-house counsel for buyers with a very deep knowledge of the market. So instead of hiring an agent, she says, they just hire their attorney that they already have on retainer.
Ultimately, everything depends on the market, and the specific knowledge one has on that market.
“I think it would be challenging, even for an experienced agent in a different market to come into our market, because real estate is so local.”
What’s to come with AgentFree?
When AgentFree’s time for expansion does come, Friedman says he doesn’t want to specifically seek out attorneys who previously worked as agents, like himself.
He wants the concept to remain the same: providing legal representation for people who find their homes online, who want to save money and want to control the process and the due diligence themselves.
“Even though I might be tempted to do things that an agent would do, I’ve got to be disciplined in keeping this a legal concept. So my growth concept would be to find attorneys who are obviously trained and skilled negotiators, and understand the drafting of contracts,” he says. “First of all, there’s not many people like me; there’s not a whole lot of real estate attorneys that have also been top-producing real estate agents. But I don’t know if I want them, because I don’t want them to be tempted to act like a real estate agent.”
Realty Redone
In the Midwest, Douglas Miller—a real estate and consumer protection attorney in the Minneapolis market—has been doing something very similar to AgentFree for the past six years, and he’s trying to get more attorneys involved.
Unlike Friedman, Miller takes a more assertive position, saying real estate attorneys have a lot more to offer. At Realty Redone by Attorneys, Miller does everything agents do, but as an attorney, representing both buyers and sellers.
Notably, Miller was a driving force behind the initial commission class-action lawsuits which have led to major policy changes in real estate, and he continues to advocate for what he describes as major reforms to how the industry operates.
Miller’s business at Realty Redone is the “next level up” from agents, he says and wants to prove to attorneys that they can do this and still make more than their hourly rate.
On the buy side, Miller charges commission based on the purchase price or the list price—whichever one is lower, to minimize any incentive from having to negotiate a higher price, he says. The typical amount a buyer broker gets is 2.7%; Realty Redone charges 1.35%. And even from charging half, Miller says the fees are still excessive.
Breaking it down
With his broker’s license, which he says he acquired for the sole purpose of gaining access to the MLS, Miller can get MLS data and purchase agreements. It also allows him to collect a buyer brokerage fee, but he only gets paid legal fees, he says.
“What I do is, I take that buyer brokerage fee and it goes into my trust account and I call it unearned fees, because that’s not my money—that’s my client’s money. Once it clears, I give that back to my clients, less my legal fees,” he explains. “We set people up on auto emails. We have a showing service that gets them into properties; if they like a property, they do a video call with us. We’re doing it all virtual, and nobody else is doing it this way.”
A third-party showing agent goes in to show the homes, and the entire inspection is done virtually, says Miller. “The client is invited in for the last hour, and the inspector goes over his findings on a computer in the kitchen of the house, and I’m there via a smartphone. While the inspectors are talking about things, I can look up permits, call the listing agents; I can do all kinds of things from my desk that I might not be able to do if I were standing there, so it works really well.”
The showing agents are not allowed to provide any brokerage services or advice, and the inspectors kill a lot of his deals, and that’s exactly what Miller wants, he says.
“A lot of inspectors advertise to (agents), ‘We disclose, but we won’t discourage.’ I want my inspectors to let me know if there’s a problem and maybe we shouldn’t be buying this house,” he says. “We really go the extra mile, and do a lot more than most (agents) do.”
He says he also does comparative market analysis differently, explaining he uses a custom grid looking at different styles of homes and comparing apples to apples, talking to appraisers and doing plenty of research.
“We take extra pains and spend extra time. We negotiate the deal, like a lawyer would, and we are never dual agents—so, we’re giving exclusive representation.”
Realty Redone offers what Miller claims are consumer-friendly fee agreements. “You can cancel ours at any time, and it’s not going to cost you anything,” Miller says. “So, there’s all kinds of things that we’ve done to try and combat all the bad things we see in fee agreements.”
“If you’re going to call yourself a fiduciary, then act like one.”
At AgentFree, Friedman makes it clear that his business model isn’t meant to take business away from agents, and he even refers clients to them if he feels it would be better for them.
In his line of work, Miller says he’s never come across a situation where he’s had to refer his clients to an agent. What’s more important to him is to see attorneys getting back into the real estate industry.
“Attorneys have been excluded from this industry, unfairly, unable to compete because the commissions that are being offered to buyer brokers have never been offered to attorneys,” he emphasizes. “It shouldn’t be that way. They shouldn’t be offering anything to buyer brokers. In my opinion, I think it’s bribery.”
He’s also tired of seeing agents “abuse their fiduciary relationship.”
The whole system of combining commissions has been problematic for decades, Miller says. And now that it’s been found to be anticompetitive, he says, there’s no good reason for a listing broker to determine how much the buyer broker pays, except for “artificially inflating the buyer broker fee.”
“They want to control it so they can get a double fee. If that were to go away—and it should—we would have a much fairer system,” he says. “The only way to get around that is to get a darn broker’s license and only use it for one purpose—and that’s to collect that commission for your clients when you’re on the buyer side.”
Noting how he’s probably the only attorney in the country who just focuses on the consumer side of real estate, Miller said that—although he appreciates seeing consumers becoming more savvy—it would be much better if agents acted like attorneys.
“If you’re going to call yourself a fiduciary, then act like one. You cannot exploit your client’s best interests,” Miller says. “They’re looking at this fiduciary relationship not as the highest level of service you can provide as a liability—because that’s what it really is—but they’re looking at it as to be able to exploit the vulnerabilities of their own clients, and I’m kind of fed up with it.”
Industry impact
Advocating for more attorneys to join in, Miller says there aren’t experience requirements for attorneys; they simply need to take the broker’s exam to get their license.
He’s been very vocal about what he’s been doing and explaining to other attorneys how they can start, too. He wants to see competition in the industry, with the hope that it will turn into better service.
If the baseline or barrier to entry were higher, with one to two years of post-high school education and maybe a year of apprenticeship, Miller thinks it would lead to fewer agents but more “good ones.” And if attorneys were to become more involved, that would be the case, he says.
The real estate industry, says Miller, is very exclusive and anticompetitive, to the extent of being a restraint on trade when it comes to attorneys.
Buyers/sellers are replacing agents, not attorneys
From his various real estate clients, Daniel Hamad, a closing attorney based in New Haven, Connecticut, made it clear that attorneys are not replacements for agents.
“An attorney is when the homeowner is replacing the (agent) with themselves and they just need someone to help close the transaction,” he says. “Now, if you’re talking non-attorney states, you’re hiring an attorney specifically for the purpose of, sort of, replacing the agent; but even there—the attorney is going to review the contract, do a little bit of the other work, but they’re not a ‘marketing guy.’ They’re not replacing everything that an agent does.”
When working with someone without an agent, Hamad says they tend to be more pushy and ill-informed about an attorney’s responsibilities.
“We can’t stand FSBOs; they’re the worst,” he says. “Anytime, I’m going to prefer that (an agent) is involved. I’m not a marketing guy. I don’t know anything about your property. I don’t know what it should be priced at or what the septic system is doing, or any of that. I’d much rather have somebody involved that knows that stuff. I mean—I’m never going to go look at your house, whether you’re buying or selling.
Enter AI
There may be bigger fish to fry than just attorneys, though, says Julie Munchel, an agent in Maryland.
With the accessibility of online portals and the rise of AI-driven tools streamlining parts of the home-buying process, she fears agents may be being perceived as less necessary. “Eventually, real estate agents will be cut out and become ‘door openers.’”
Younger people stray away from face-to-face interaction and would much rather get automated, instant service through AI than have to go through an agent, she says. They don’t like picking up the phone or waiting for their agents to get back to them with paperwork, so AI is a huge draw for them, she adds.
“A lot of these homes, with the photographs you have, the tours—you really just need the agent to verify what they’ve already seen. They’ll Google ‘How to buy a house.’ They’ll Google whatever so that they don’t have to ask me ‘How do I buy a house?’ They’ll Google it and get the information from AI,” Munchel says. “AI cannot replicate the advice I think that an agent can give, but I think people don’t want to pay for that.”
There will still be older people who want the full service you can get from agents, she says, but with the younger generation, agents need to do something to combat the growing popularity of AI. Similarly, the appeal of attorneys is obvious, but also limited, and agents need to understand what it is they have to offer above and beyond a lawyer.
An attorney won’t walk a buyer through a house and point out flaws or talk them out of buying a house, she argues. Although AgentFree and Realty Redone are both run by agents-turned-attorneys, “they” have the background to understand what clients may need, but that likely isn’t the case for all attorneys, Munchel says.
“I don’t think it’s far-fetched to think that agents will, at one point, maybe, be not as valued. And I think that’s why you’re seeing attorneys—because I feel like people are like, ‘If I’m going to pay, I’m going to pay for the real deal.’ They think that an attorney is going to do more for them than what an agent can do, when in fact, I don’t think that’s the case at all.”