Transparency
How we get paid.
A short, plain explanation of exactly how The Lane Associates earns money on each of the three paths we work — cash purchase, traditional listing, and referral. You should never have to guess where an agent's incentives are pointed. Read the whole thing in three minutes.
Revenue path
Direct cash purchase
When it happens
You accept our written cash offer and we close as the buyer.
What you pay
$0 in fees. We pay all standard buyer-side closing costs. Your net at settlement is the offer amount minus your mortgage payoff and any other liens on the property.
What we make
Our margin comes from the spread between what we pay you and what we eventually get for the home — either a resale after light repairs (fix-and-flip), a resale to a rental investor, or holding the property ourselves as a rental. That spread has to cover closing costs on both sides, repair costs, holding costs (property tax, insurance, utilities while we work), and profit.
Why we're telling you this
Typical cash-buyer spreads in the DMV are 15–30% below after-repair value, depending on condition, market, and how quickly the deal has to move. That's why our written cash offer is usually below what the same house would fetch on the MLS after 60–90 days of prep and marketing. The tradeoff is speed + certainty + no repairs — and that only makes sense to you when speed + certainty + no repairs are worth more than the price difference.
Revenue path
Traditional MLS listing
When it happens
You choose to list the property with us as a licensed listing agent, and it sells to a third party.
What you pay
You net the sale price minus a total commission (listing side + buyer's-agent side), minus your usual seller-side closing costs. Standard total commission in the DMV runs 5–6% of sale price, split roughly evenly between the two agents.
What we make
We earn the listing-side portion of the commission at closing — typically 2.5–3% of the sale price. Our brokerage (LPT Realty, LLC) takes a percentage of that per our broker agreement. There are no upfront fees, no marketing packages you have to buy, no cancellation fees for standard residential listings.
Why we're telling you this
For homes with equity and time on their side, a traditional listing almost always nets more than a cash sale — the extra dollars from the open market are larger than the commission and prep costs. When we recommend listing over cash, that's why. When we recommend cash over listing, it's usually because the timeline, condition, or family situation makes the extra weeks of a listing not worth the added stress.
Revenue path
Referral to a partner agent
When it happens
You're outside our licensed area (VA and everywhere but DC + MD), and we hand you off to a vetted agent in your area.
What you pay
$0 out of pocket. The referral doesn't change anything about the deal you'll have with the receiving agent — you pay their commission structure directly, at closing, from your proceeds.
What we make
Standard real-estate referral fee, paid by the receiving broker at closing — usually 25% of that agent's commission. This is completely broker-to-broker and doesn't come out of your side.
Why we're telling you this
We only refer to agents we trust. If we don't have someone we'd personally send a family member to in your area, we say so and point you at RealTrends rankings or your local Realtor association instead.
What we don't charge
Things you might see on other sites — not here.
- No upfront fees on any path — cash offer or listing.
- No marketing packages sold to sellers. Marketing is part of a listing agent's job, not a separate line item.
- No cancellation fees on standard residential listings.
- No fees on a cash offer that doesn't close.
- No fees on a consultation, no matter how long it takes.
- No fees for referring you out of network.
Comparing paths
Which path pays us more?
For any given home, a traditional MLS listing usually produces more dollars for us than a direct cash purchase — a listing commission is a percentage of a higher sale price, and doesn't come with the risk of holding, repairing, or reselling the property.
We tell you that because it's the answer to the obvious question: if listing pays you more, why would you ever recommend a cash sale? The answer is that for a lot of the homeowners who call us, a traditional listing genuinely isn't the right call — foreclosure timelines, condition issues, probate coordination, divorce sales, tenant situations, medical hardship, and speed all move the math. When those factors are real, a cash sale is what actually serves the homeowner, even though the commission wouldn't have.
And when a traditional listing IS the right call, we say so and offer to do the listing ourselves. Same team, same brokerage, better outcome for you.