Fidelity National Financial has purchased a small California company with a big plan in mind - to manage the real estate transaction from start to finish for credit union and banks as affinity partners. Realtors fund the affinity programs by paying up to 35 percent of their commissions in referral fees, 25 percent of which is rebated to the bank's or credit union's customer.

HomeSold, Inc is essentially a one-man operation in California, but the former owner, now an FNF employee, Harold Vandiver, says the idea is to go nationwide.

With a business plan borrowed from affinity relocation services which manage an employee's move from start to finish, Fidelity-owned HomeSold has some slight differences. The company creates private-label affinity programs for entities such as builders, banks and credit unions, in other words, companies that have mortgage lending. For example, ABC Credit Union's HomeSold program might be called ABC Realty Services, suggests Vandiver.

"If you are a credit union, you want to offer good things to your members, and if you are a bank, you want to control more mortgages," explains Vandiver.

"This way the banks can go after customers directly and refer them to us," he says. "Banks and credit unions would market it (the private label affinity program) to their customers, and we help them control more mortgages because they get the client. The client gets a top real estate agent, a personal transaction assistant and 25 percent of the agent's commission rebated. We get the referral fee."

He says the referral fee would not be more than 35 percent of the agent's commission and the rebate to the consumer would come out of the referral fee.

How does the company get real estate agents to participate? Vandiver says he finds Realtors on Realtor.com and he asks Fidelity title reps who is out there "doing good." The company is beginning with requests for membership and Internet data display (IDX) links with key MLS organizations as a brokerage, which also enables the company under RESPA guidelines to accept referral fees from other brokers and agents.

"We are creating a master Web site, and we are going to team with banks and credit unions and offer a full-service real estate solution, and choose the agents from the top real estate companies," says Vandiver.

Participating agents will go through a qualifying process and must have five years full-time experience and be willing to follow HomeSold's procedures to be part of the network. "We get Realtors involved by telling them we are going to send them business," says Vandiver.

To date, Vandiver says he has about a dozen affinity partners and about 90 real estate agents on board.

Since Fidelity is one of the largest title companies in the nation, does HomeSold offer discounts on title work to the affinity partners to further capitalize on the relationship?

"This is separate from what Fidelity does," says Vandiver. "We don't bring up the idea of title. Naturally we would like to have our brand do the title work."

Then why did Fidelity buy HomeSold? "Their goal is to make money," says Vandiver. "They get the excess commission we make over what we give the public."

Another Web site that Vandiver operates for Fidelity is called Charity Affinity Program Services, which will be integrated into the new HomeSold site, once it is completed, according to Vandiver.

In this program, Fidelity offers substantial discounts on title insurance and closing costs as well as a 20 percent rebate to registerred non-porift organization.

Published: March 21, 2003

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