When I first met the team with OnePipeline, I thought they had the coolest business plan of 2000. They were the only technology company with a clear, provable idea of how to put money into real estate agents' pockets. OnePipeline had created a way to allow real estate agents to legally collect the loan origination fee by automating compliance in a patent-pending engine.

Wow! Agents could earn extra income (about one percent of the loan) and have a great way to offset commission challenges, and for much of the work that they are already doing for buyers. Other benefits included being able to instantly qualify buyers themselves, with no hand-off to a loan officer and waiting to find out that the buyer is only a tire-kicker. Then they could track the loan in a transaction platform to make sure everything closes on time.

With OnePipeline's plan, agents could lock in buyers more easily, make more money, have a point of difference in the marketplace, and have greater control over closings, all for only a little more work. What's not to love?

Apparently it is the "little more work" that is the problem. Despite what appears to be a gold nest egg on the ground, agents just didn't want to stoop over to pick it up. Even with the threat looming that banks will shortly be able to offer real estate services that don't require licensure, agents still didn't care whether they had the extra competitive compliance advantage or not. And that's too bad.

Despite a great idea and business plan, and a heavy media push, OnePipeline, with about 70 employees, and millions in funding, has only signed up about 7,000 agents in a year. Many of those have only used the program a few times. And that is after registering with OnePipeline saying they want it! This leaves Onepipeline with some "splaining to do" to their investors. How do you justify a rumored $35 million in venture capital?

Then OnePipeline met with Homestore and the NAR. And everything will change, or so OnePipeline hopes. They have retooled their marketing from the bottom-up approach to the top-down approach. From agents to portals and brokers as a better gateway to agents.

Now OnePipeline has a great story to tell investors. Under the terms of the deal, Homestore.com™ will use OnePipeline as its provider of automated legal compliance technology related to compensation for real estate professionals that assist with mortgage loan origination. Homestore.com also will acquire an undisclosed amount of equity in OnePipeline. The Automated Compliance System™ features a sophisticated Automated Compliance Engine (ACE)™ with workflow software that conforms to ever-changing laws, regulations and disclosure requirements governing real estate and mortgage lending. Perfect for Homestore's long-awaited eRealtor platform.

The only problem for OnePipeline is there is no eRealtor platform yet, but investors are no doubt eager to give Homestore a chance to launch the platform no matter how long it takes. Why? Because of the top-down approach. Advertising directly to Realtors hasn't worked all that well, plus it is expensive to get sign-ups one at a time. But with the top-down approach, you can get many Realtors to sign-up. In theory.

Homestore so far has turned out to be a very expensive advertising medium for OnePipeline to register Realtors. But OnePipeline is pleased with the deal, because their association with the NAR and Homestore has opened a lot of doors. Take the just-announced contract between Crye-Leike and OnePipeline.

Crye-Leike, the 10th largest real estate company in the nation with approximately 2,100 agents, along with 1st Trust Bank for Savings has entered into an agreement with OnePipeline to act as a processing center for loans originated by Crye-Leike agents.

This is a sweetheart deal. Guess who owns an interest in 1st Trust Bank? Mr. Crye. By encouraging his agents to get compliant on OnePipeline's system, he also is assured that the brokerage will benefit with loan originations, one-stop-shopping at its best. One would assume that agents are already on board with 1st Trust. But maybe some weren't. An extra carrot of $250 per buyer is pretty tempting.

What happened to collecting the whole loan origination fee? They can if they still want to, but Crye-Lieke agents are only going to get $250 per loan, for sitting the buyer down and introducing them to the loan platform which pipelines right to the mortgage broker, 1st Trust Bank. Easy money.

Why is earning less money a good deal for agents? John Moran, spokesperson for OnePipeline, makes it all fall into place. OnePipeline's research revealed that agents want to be involved in the application process and are happy with earning less because they want to be involved at the beginning of the transaction. They are happy to turn it over to a loan officer to close it.

In other words, they just didn't want to work that hard, so OnePipeline changed its business model accordingly.

"We stepped back from being the lender to managing the compliance tasks," says Moran, "because we found that the agents were really only interested in doing a smaller portion of the originations, and kicking the rest over to a loan officer for support."

Moran and OnePipeline are confident that the new marketing formula is better and more realistically balanced between what agents are willing to do and what is fair compensation for them as well as OnePipeline's top-down partners.

"It cements the relationship at the local level," he says. "It makes sense to put ancillary services in the hands of the agents."