In this promotional presentation, Ownify founder and CEO Frank Rhoad outlines a new fractional ownership model designed to revive real‑estate brokerage revenue and address the first‑time‑buyer crisis. He explains that traditional home buying has become unaffordable, with sales down 50% from 2021 and ownership costs about 40% higher than rent. Ownify’s solution is to place each home in an LLC that issues 10,000 “bricks” (shares). Buyers purchase bricks over time, renting the unowned bricks, thereby achieving a hybrid of renting and owning with a lower down‑payment (as low as 2%) and a monthly payment roughly 20% higher than rent rather than the 40% jump to full ownership. The model creates equity for buyers while preserving renter‑like flexibility, and it offers investors rental income and appreciation participation. For real‑estate agents, the model opens a new revenue stream: agents can act as investment managers, source both buyers and investors, and earn higher commissions by structuring these deals. The presentation includes testimonials from Raleigh agents (Trevor Burrus, Elise Helton, Bryant Levitt) and a real‑estate attorney (Jeremiah Jackson) who endorse the model’s ability to close deals, reduce buyer stress, and expand client bases. Rhoad invites agents to watch a 90‑minute “Ownify University” training, then schedule a call to become local market partners.
Chapters
Hi, if you're a real estate agent today, you're probably closing fewer deals and working harder than ever before, right? Sales volumes are down 50% from the peak in 2021 and buyers are scarce.
My name is Frank Rhode.
I'm founder and CEO of Ownify. I'm a realtor, I'm an investor, I'm a mortgage loan officer. I've spent the last 20 years of my career in the mortgage and real estate business, first as an entrepreneur building technology companies and now more recently as an investor. Really focused on the first-time buyer challenge, right? Helping first-time home buyers get into the market. And I wanted to take a couple of minutes just explaining a new model that we've built that really requires a rethink and a mind shift around how we buy real estate, how we help young people in particular buy real estate and get into their starter home. And so what we did over the last couple of years, we really challenged this notion of why do you have to buy 100% of the home? Why do you have to buy the home with a large amount of debt? You know, get a mortgage, pay that debt off over 30 years. Why isn't there a journey that allows you to buy your home brick by brick, fraction by fraction over time through a share purchase, right? Not rent-to-own offering, but truly fractional ownership in the way that allows you to build equity over time while living in the home, while having the benefits of being a renter, but also the benefits of being an owner. So what we've built with Ownify is really an on-ramp into ownership for first-time home buyers that combines the best of renting with the best of owning. Owning, but creates a truly unique path in the middle, right? And if you think about what it means to rent versus to own today, it's a huge jump, right? Today, the cost of ownership for the average home in America is about 40% higher than the cost of rent. And that begs the question, well, why isn't there a path in the middle? And that's exactly what we've built, right? Fractional ownership sits between renting and owning, and it bridges the gap between that, that cost, right, of renting versus the cost of ownership. So rather than a 40% jump with the down payment requirement and increased monthly payment, all of that, what we've created is a 20% jump. So more than renting, but significantly less than owning with a mortgage. Now, how does that work? It really is a rethink of the way we hold title and the way we've defined ownership in this country right now. Traditionally, when you talk to a realtor, you talk to a first-time buyer, you talk to a mortgage lender, you talk to anyone and you ask them, well, what's ownership? Right. Most people don't have a good definition. But the closest we get is to say, well, ownership means you're on title, right? You own title to the— you hold title to the home. It's filed with the county and you have all the rights of possession and utilization, usage. And that's kind of how we thought about ownership for a long time. And what we've challenged and kind of built with Ownify is this notion of fractional ownership really by issuing shares in homes, right? Truly bona fide ownership interests in the home through a share structure. Now, the way we do that is we buy homes, we place them into LLCs, those LLCs issue 10,000 shares, we call them bricks, on day one, and then the customer buys bricks over time and rents bricks that they haven't bought. So it's fractional ownership, fractional renting. The rental piece has all the rights and benefits of a renter. The ownership piece creates equity and true ownership expressed as shares or membership interests in that LLC. So rather than the customer being on title, it's an LLC that holds title and the customer, the buyer, that first-time buyer is a shareholder of that LLC. And that's how we've created ownership, fractional ownership as a vehicle to build equity at lower monthly payments, more affordable payments, more affordable down payment upfront over time. Now, why is that relevant to you as a real estate agent? Well, one, it allows you to help first-time buyers, renters get off the sidelines and buy their starter home with a strong cash offer, with a lower down payment, lower monthly payment than they could otherwise afford, right? So it helps you fulfill that mission of helping first-time buyers. And it also allows you to become an investment manager, an investment agent, and really increase the revenue that you can generate for yourself per deal by working with Ownify, not just in sourcing buyers, but in sourcing investors and structuring these deals, right? What we've been doing in our launch markets is we've partnered local investors with local home buyers through these LLC structures. The investors benefit from rental income. They participate in home price appreciation. The consumer benefits from being able to buy the home, build equity, have the protection of being partnered with investors, you know, not having to worry about major repairs and unforeseen circumstances, right? Property taxes, insurance, all of that. So it's a win-win situation for both parties, the investor and the first-time buyer. And what we're looking for in our realtor partners is agents who want to dig in, who understand this model, who want to learn how to do this in their own markets, help first-time buyers, help local investors, partner the two on a journey that creates ownership in their local communities, right? By leveraging the capital and the investor base that might exist in those local communities. So if you are an experienced agent, if you know how to think about investment returns, capital structures, right? If you have the ability to speak credibly to local investors and to first-time buyers at the same time, we want to talk to you. If you know how to do that, we want to partner with you as an investment partner in your local market. Now, uh, in this channel, you'll have a lot of content around how exactly this model works. I encourage you to watch the full 90-minute Ownify University that goes into every single component of our structure, how it works, how we've tested it, what the results have been, how it works for the consumer, how it works for the investor. Please walk through that, learn as much as you can, and then schedule a call with me or one of our team members to see whether this model might work for you and whether you want to join us as a partner in your local market. Thank you.
The housing market is so competitive, so it's just, it's harder to find that path to ownership.
There's just so much stress and anxiety. You know, I felt like we got into this as such a smooth process. They answered any question that we had, and it was great.
Oh yeah, I would definitely recommend Ownify. Absolutely, yeah. I don't think either of us would partake in anything that we wouldn't recommend to a family, friends. Ownify provides just an alternative or a different way for people who are looking to become first-time homebuyers, a way for them to accomplish that goal.
They've been great.
This home happened to pop up at the perfect time, but maybe not the perfect financial time. And I said, let me introduce you to Ownify. These guys that have a completely new product that will eliminate this interest rate hurdle for you guys and give you the ability to get into this house that you really, really want. My name is Trevor Burrus. I'm a real estate agent with Love It Properties in Raleigh. Instantly I knew we had something really special that was going to benefit a lot of our clients.
When I first heard, I thought this was a really unique and cool opportunity for first-time homebuyers have a competitive edge in our market. My name is Elise Helton. I'm a local realtor in Raleigh in the Triangle area. A lot of first-time homebuyers are fearful from what they see on the news. I know how eager and excited they were to get into a home and start that, that next step. So because of Ownify, they were able to just put the 2% down, not worry about closing costs, repair and maintenance, and they could get into the home sooner. So I thought it would be a great fit for them.
So I tell my realtors and other realtors in the Triangle that Ownify is going to— it's going to expand your client base. I'm Bryant Levitt with Love It Properties, a real estate firm here in the Triangle helping people love their homes. My job is to be a useful tool and an asset to my realtors. Ownify has been that. I've been able to already put Ownify in front of clients but also my agents. Ownify makes every buyer that can make the monthly payment on equal footing.
The current path to ownership is an incredibly narrow and well-worn path that is very exclusive and has left a lot of people sidelined, especially now that the market's just gone bananas locally. I'm really excited that Ownify is here in this market. They've done their due diligence. The ownership agreement between Ownify and the ONI looks fantastic. My name's Jeremiah Jackson. I'm with Jackson Law. I am a real estate attorney, so I help people across the finish line from contract to close.
Ownify is going to change the game for people to be able to continue to buy homes when they no longer can afford it in the conventional way.
Hi, my name is Frank Rhoad.
I'm founder and CEO of Ownify.
What if you could invest in single-family homes, generate tax-efficient passive income, potential capital appreciation, and also help solve a massive generational problem we're living through. If you're a real estate investor, you know that today first-time home buyers are facing the toughest market in over 50 years. Rising home prices, mortgage rates that are higher than at any point in the last 25 years, and cash and institutional investors that are outbidding first-time buyers. If you're a first-time buyer, you know this. It's an extremely tough market out there. So at Ownify, we asked a very simple question: could we solve this problem if we partnered socially conscious individual and institutional investors with first-time buyers and put them on the same team? So that's what we did. We built a zero-debt investment partnership that for first-time buyers creates a strong cash offer with as little as 2% down, fixed monthly payments, the ability to build equity, and zero debt. At the same time, for our investors, we're generating significant passive income that's tax-efficient, potential home price appreciation, and we're allowing you to solve a massive generational problem potentially in your local community. If you'd like to learn more, come check us out at ownify.com.
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Come join us. Click the link below and schedule time with me, and I look forward to meeting you. Thanks.
