Who Gets Paid
This is one of the most important pages you'll read here. Everything else describes what the platform does. This page is where the model proves it's real — where you can see, line by line, that the incentives point the right way and that nobody is getting rich at your expense.
The elegant part of the model: almost nobody is paid by us. Everyone in a deal is paid out of the deal's own money. The platform doesn't fund salaries, doesn't carry payroll, doesn't front cash. It assembles the project, takes a thin slice, and passes the rest through.
So where does the money come from? In any real-estate project, there are only ever three pots.
Every single actor in a project — seller, builder, manager, lawyer, lender, the platform, and you — is paid from one of those three pots. Nothing comes from nowhere. Once you see which pot each hand reaches into, the whole machine becomes legible.
Pot ① — Paid from the Raise
Paid once, at funding / close. This is the capital coming in — and the people who get the property built, bought, and legally clean are paid out of it before the doors open.
| Actor | What they do | How they're paid |
|---|---|---|
| Seller | Sells the property into the deal | Purchase price (one-time) |
| Builder / GC | Construction & rehab | Contracted build price (won by auction / proposal) |
| Professionals | Attorney, title, escrow, inspector, architect | Flat professional fees |
| Originator | Brought / sourced the project | Origination fee |
| The Platform (us) | Found it, vetted it, assembled the capital | Finder's fee |
| Rails vendor | KYC, share tech, compliance setup | Setup fee |
Pot ② — Paid from the Cashflow
Paid recurring, every month, out of the rent the property collects. This is the engine. The order here matters more than anywhere else: the people who do the work are paid first — and the owners are paid from what's left.
| Actor | What they do | How they're paid |
|---|---|---|
| Property Manager | Tenants, rent, maintenance | % of collected rent (~8–10%) |
| Representing Agent | Quarterbacks the project, fiduciary to owners | Management fee |
| Lender (if leveraged) | Provides the mortgage | Interest |
| The Platform (us) | Runs the rails + distributions | Platform fee (small slice of cashflow) |
| → The Owners / Investors | Put up the capital | Everything left = their distribution |
Pot ③ — Paid from the Exit
Paid at the back end, when the property sells or refinances. This is the upside pot — and it's structured so the people steering the deal only win big if you win.
| Actor | What they do | How they're paid |
|---|---|---|
| Representing Agent | Hit the targets | Promote (a cut of the upside, only if it performs) |
| Originator (optional) | The deal worked | Small carry |
| The Owners | Took the risk | Return of capital + share of appreciation |
The principle that makes it fair
Read it top to bottom. This is the whole ethic of the model in four lines.
- Workers get paid before owners. Labor — builder, manager, lawyer, lender — is paid out of the raise and the cashflow. The crowd is paid from what's left. Nobody gets rich while the owners get nothing; the people doing the work simply can't be the ones holding the bag.
- The agent's real upside is back-ended. The representing agent takes a modest management fee month to month — but the promote only pays if the project performs. They eat last and best, with their reputation staked on the result. Aligned, not extractive.
- The platform takes a thin slice off two pots and carries zero cost. A finder's fee from the raise, a small platform fee from the cashflow — and nothing else. No buildings on our books, no payroll, no inventory. Asset-light all the way through. See how-we-earn.
- Every fee is disclosed on the project page. This is the anti-shady feature. Before you put a single dollar in, you see exactly who is paid what, from which pot. Compare that to a stadium-bond deal, where the fees are buried three documents deep and the insiders are the only ones who can read them.
The two tricky actors
Two roles look like they should be paid — and rewarding them well is genuinely good for the platform — but both can quietly cross legal lines if you're sloppy. Handle with care.
⚠️ Scouts / curators — community members who surface deals. You want to reward them; deal flow is the lifeblood of the platform. But paying a percentage cut for bringing capital or deals trips unregistered-broker rules — that's textbook "transaction-based compensation," and it's where well-meaning platforms get into real trouble. Structure their reward as flat / reputation-based, or make them registered participants — never freelance a commission. See the-role-marketplace.
⚠️ Governance participants — people who hold and vote. Governance should be a right that comes with participating, not a salary. The moment you pay people to hold and vote, it starts to look like a security paying a dividend. Their "pay" isn't a governance check — it's that they're usually also owners, profiting through their actual project stakes. The vote is a right; the return comes from ownership. See tokenomics.
Where this leaves you
If you're the investor, you are the owner — the residual claimant in every pot. You're paid after the workers and before no one. You can see every fee before you commit. And the people steering your deal only get their big payday if your deal works.
That's the model proving it's real: not a promise that we'll be fair, but a structure in which being unfair to you would require breaking the rules in plain sight, on a page you've already read.
Keep going: - following-the-money — the single-deal dollar flow, traced end to end - the-roles — who each of these actors actually is - the-role-marketplace — how partners win the work (and why scouts are paid the way they are) - two-lanes — the two kinds of deals these pots fund - how-we-earn — the platform's thin slice, in detail - tokenomics — ownership, governance rights, and why we don't pay people to vote - the-connector — the asset-light finder-and-connector thesis