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With an unpredictable housing market and long gaps between paydays, more agents are turning to commission advance companies to bridge the gap. As the practice grows, so do concerns about legal gray areas, aggressive repayment tactics and a lack of industry oversight, according to reporting from The Real Deal.
Commission advance companies are booming as a lifeline for real estate agents who can’t afford to wait for closing day. While these services offer financial assistance, they often come with costly strings attached.
The companies front agents a portion of their expected commission in exchange for repayment once the deal closes, and that often comes with fees that mimic payday loans or merchant cash advances. To agents, this immediate relief of mounting bills seems appealing, but if the deal falls through, they may find themselves falling into even deeper financial trouble than before.
Agents hit the pavement daily, marketing listings and navigating negotiations, yet many wait weeks or months to get paid. Inspections, mortgage delays and contract issues stretch timelines, and some deals fall apart altogether. However, bills don’t stop.
For agents living off savings, credit cards or personal loans, commission advances can seem like the last resort.
Bill Lublin | CEO of Century 21 Advantage Gold Pennsylvania
“They perform a useful function for some people that are newer in the business, some people that have a string of unexpected delays or interruptions in their transactions,” Bill Lublin, CEO of Century 21 Advantage Gold in Pennsylvania said, as reported by TRD.
But the contract fine print paints a much more complicated picture.
Contracts often allow companies to file UCC liens, which gives them a legal claim not only to commissions but sometimes personal assets. In many cases, the agreement includes a confession of judgment, where the agent preemptively agrees they owe the money and waives their right to dispute it in court.
One North Carolina agent took out $6,000 advances and ended up owing nearly $11,000 after fees, penalties and a 33 percent surcharge buried in the contract. She later filed for bankruptcy.
Stories such as these are becoming more common, and when agents miss payments, companies don’t wait long to take legal action.
From 2022 to 2024, three major firms, including Premier Commission, Concord Commission Advance and Commission Express, filed over 100 liens per year in New York. Premier Commission Managing Principal Ashley Joffe said the lien filings don’t tell the whole story. “How many advances are done by any company, and volumes and all this type of stuff, [it’s] very, very tough to get this data,” TRD reported.
Still, the spike highlights the growing use, and growing consequences, of commission advances.
Part of the problem is that the traditional financial system doesn’t fit the real estate agent lifestyle.
“The whole financial economy is built for salaried professionals,” Brandon Wright, who runs the startup Tongo, a provider of credit for agents minus the fees for late payments, told TRD. “All of your bills are due monthly. And there’s this underlying assumption by the financial services industry that you’re getting paid every two weeks.”
According to Wright, the average real estate agent carries about $25,000 in credit card debt, more than double the national average, and, in general, agents use more credit cards.
As the demand for quick cash grows, newer startups are entering the space, some with promises of fairer terms and better agent support.
Briggs Elwell | RLTYco CEO and Co-founder
RLTYco, a Serhant-backed company, has emerged offering commission funding, health, tax and legal support. It raised $20 million in series A funding in early 2025, and claims to offer more agent-friendly pricing — as low as 3 percent of a purchased commission, depending on the deal.
However, even RLTYco isn’t immune to controversy. In a 2023 bankruptcy case, the company deducted between 6 percent and 15 percent from a Corcoran agent’s commission and reserved the right to pursue 125 percent of the advanced amount if the agent violated the agreement. Last year, the company filed 26 liens in New York on all of the agent’s assets.
The bankruptcy emerged after an agent attempted to withdraw funds owed to the company after failing to pay back the purchased commission, a lawyer for RLTYco told Inman after this story was published.
The higher payments came after that agent failed to satisfy the terms of the deal multiple times, the lawyer added, characterizing the episode as an “outlier.” The matter was settled out of court.
RLTYco CEO and co-founder Briggs Elwell told TRD those filings were only used as a “last-ditch” recoupment effort.
