Clever Real Estate is a national brokerage that pairs agents with consumers looking to buy or sell a home. Unlike other brokerages, Clever is an entirely online service (listwithclever.com). Rather than having agents pay for leads, agents pay Clever a referral fee (a portion of the home’s selling price) when their agents successfully help clients buy or sell a home.
Clever Real Estate offers full-service listings for 1.5%. Clever doesn’t alter the buyer agent’s commissions, so that agent typically receives the standard 3%.
Note: this is an updated fee, as Clever used to charge sellers 1%.
In many ways, Clever Real Estate is like a matchmaking service of real estate agents. They find someone they think can help you buy or sell your house, then connect you to each other. These agents are traditional agents who already work for other brokerages like Coldwell-Banker or RE/MAX. For the most part, though, what happens after that is between you and the agent/their brokerage - Clever won’t be involved.
Clever relies on a referral network of agents. Here’s what they look for in agents:
One of the main issues with a traditional commission setup (which Clever ultimately relies on, just with a different commission split) is that agents are motivated by commissions first, rather than client satisfaction. Why? If they don’t close your deal quickly, they don’t get paid - period.
By comparison, brokerages like Houwzer are moving away from the traditional commission structure. Houwzer agents are paid a full salary with benefits. This means that clients can take a year to look at homes if that’s how long they need, and agents aren’t incentivized to push them into the most expensive homes they can afford. And because Houwzer’s agents are employees, rather than contractors like traditional agents, agents receive extensive training, support, and are backed by a logistics coordinator and full-support team.
Clever Real Estate is a legitimate real estate brokerage. Clever essentially serves as a referral company, connecting home buyers and sellers to agents in their area. Participating listing agents have to agree to Clever’s commission terms (1.5% listing fee, with a minimum of $3,000).
There are hundreds of reviews for Clever online - mostly positive and some negative - indicating that this is not a fly-by-night company offering one thing and giving consumers another. Although they operate out of St. Louis, Missouri, their services are offered nationwide through their online platform listwithclever.com.
As HomeOpenly points out in their review of List With Clever, “Clever Real Estate operates as a licensed real estate brokerage… but it does not produce any services that are typically offered by real estate agents, and does not represent consumers when buying or selling real estate in any State. Clever Real Estate operates with a sole purpose to collect referral fees.”
This is worth emphasizing because many people believe Clever Real Estate to be a brokerage similar to Coldwell Banker or Houwzer, but in reality, it operates as a referral fee network. Clever isn’t training agents or creating technologies for them to use; it’s simply connecting clients to agents at existing brokerages that do the heavy lifting of marketing the homes and overseeing the transaction.
On the Better Business Bureau (BBB) website, List With Clever has a customer review rating of 3.4 out of 5 stars based on 5 reviews. The BBB is a nonprofit organization that helps consumers find businesses they can trust.
On Trustpilot, a popular consumer review site, Clever Real Estate has a rating of 4.9 out of 5 stars based on 1,157 reviews. Here are some of the reviews you can find there:
It’s worth noting that List With Clever was responsive to both positive and negative reviews, indicating that they are not ignoring the issues any clients have with their services.
For example, in response to a negative review where the agent requested money beyond the 1.5% Clever promised, Clever co-founder Luke Babich replied: "Clever is constantly investing in our Agent Network… As we make those investments, fewer and fewer customers will have a negative experience where a newer agent doesn't get the program.”
If this is your first time buying a home, keep in mind that it’s usually the seller who pays the commission fees for both agents as part of their closing costs.
Houwzer offers additional savings for sellers who buy with them - by bundling their mortgage and title services, you'll receive $2,500 back at closing.
When it comes to sellers, it really depends.
You also need to consider that Houwzer recommends 2-3% commission for the buyer's agent, but Clever doesn’t set a number. If the standard 3% is used, then some of the money sellers save on the sell side with Clever then has to be used on the buy side.
For a $600,000 home:
Clever is going to be more affordable than a traditional brokerage, but sellers are ultimately going to pay a little more than they would working with Houwzer - for the same services.
Find out how much you'd save with us