Fund My Home’s advertised website at “fundmyhome.org” fails to provide information on company ownership or management.
I spotted a different URL in Fund My Home’s marketing materials (“realestatemortgagegrants.com”). Although hosted on a different domain, this website is Fund My Home branded and fills in the gaps.
Fund My Home is run by owner and President and Carlos Burattini. No information about him is provided on either of Fund My Home’s websites.
Possibly due to language-barriers, I was unable to find anything MLM related on Burattini.
His Facebook profile is for all intents and purposes blank but does reveal he’s based out of Florida.
That lead me to the Florida Real Estate Commission, who revoked Burattini’s real-estate license in 2010.
Burattini’s license appears to have been revoked due to public complaints. I wasn’t able to get specifics on any complaints.
Considering Fund My Home operates in the real-estate MLM niche, this is not a good look.
Read on for a full review of Fund My Home’s MLM business opportunity.
Fund My Home’s Products
Fund My Home offers a mortgage pre-screening service.
The service is offered through Real Estate Mortgage Grants & Down Payment Assistance, Inc., which Fund My Home claims is a 501 (c)(3) non profit organization.
Real Estate Mortgage Grants & Down Payment Assistance, along with a whole bunch of other companies, was incorporated by Burattini in Florida.
Upfront costs for applicants using Fund My Home’s service include:
- $39 for a credit report
- a minimum of $3000 for earnest deposits
- ~$450 for an appraisal report and
- $350 for a home inspection report
Despite these actual costs, Fund My Home markets itself as allowing applicants to “close with zero or little out of pocket” expenses.
Fund My Home’s Compensation Plan
Fund My Home’s compensation plan takes $3200 from corporate sponsors, per application, and uses it to pay commissions.
Fund My Home Affiliate Ranks
There are nine affiliate ranks within Fund My Home’s compensation plan.
Along with their respective qualification criteria, they are as follows:
- Affiliate – sign up as a Fund My Home affiliate
- Bronze – recruit two affiliates
- Silver – recruit three affiliates
- Gold – recruit four affiliates
- Platinum – recruit five affiliates
- Sapphire – recruit six affiliates
- Ruby – recruit seven affiliates
- Emerald – recruit eight affiliates
- Diamond – recruit nine affiliates
- Titanium – recruit ten affiliates
MLM Commission Qualification
To qualify for MLM commissions a Fund My Home affiliate must
- recruit two affiliates; and
- generate one down payment assistance customer annually.
Retail and Recruitment Commissions
Fund My Home affiliates earn $750 per generated down payment assistance customer.
This customer can be a retail customer or recruited affiliate.
Residual Commissions
Fund My Home pays residual commissions via a unilevel compensation structure.
A unilevel compensation structure places an affiliate at the top of a unilevel team, with every personally recruited affiliate placed directly under them (level 1):
If any level 1 affiliates recruit new affiliates, they are placed on level 2 of the original affiliate’s unilevel team.
If any level 2 affiliates recruit new affiliates, they are placed on level 3 and so on and so forth down a theoretical infinite number of levels.
Fund My Home caps payable unilevel team levels at eight.
Residual commissions are paid as a split of $3200, collected from Fund My Home’s corporate sponsors.
- Bronze ranked affiliates receive $500 on level 1 (personally recruited affiliates) and $450 on level 2
- Silver ranked affiliates receive $500 on level 1, $450 on level 2 and $400 on level 3
- Gold ranked affiliates receive $500 on level 1, $450 on level 2, $400 on level 3 and $350 on level 4
- Platinum ranked affiliates receive $500 on level 1, $450 on level 2, $400 on level 3, $350 on level 4 and $300 on level 5
- Sapphire ranked affiliates receive $500 on level 1, $450 on level 2, $400 on level 3, $350 on level 4, $300 on level 5 and $250 on level 6
- Diamond ranked affiliates receive $500 on level 1, $450 on level 2, $400 on level 3, $350 on level 4, $300 on level 5, $250 on level 6 and $150 on level 7
- Titanium ranked affiliates receive $500 on level 1, $450 on level 2, $400 on level 3, $350 on level 4, $300 on level 5, $250 on level 6, $150 on level 7 and $50 on level 8
Joining Fund My Home
Fund My Home affiliate membership is $49 plus an ongoing monthly fee.
Fund My Home refers to the ongoing fees as “continuing education” but fails to disclose costs.
Update 6th December 2021 – Carlos Burattini has been in touch to advise Fund My Home doesn’t charge affiliates until they’ve earned a commission. /end update
Conclusion
The crux of Fund My Home is whether the majority of applicants are affiliates or retail customers.
One Fund My Home marketing slide states:
Home-buyers are required to publicize their “Down Payment Assistance” on their social media when they get a “clear to close” before they close.
This ladies and gentlemen will result in more interested Down Payment Assistance recipients for you to service.
One would think some of these testimonials would feature on Fund My Home’s website, but they don’t.
Digging into Fund My Home’s compensation plan, commissions are paid on $3200 collected from applicants.
The source of this $3200 isn’t specified. It isn’t detailed in applicant costs, so I think it’s sourced from loan funds.
Anyway from there it’s pretty straight forward, $3200 from applicants is split and paid down eight levels of recruitment.
To earn on all eight unilevel team levels you have to recruit. And there’s no retail volume requirements.
Keep in mind that personally sponsoring new associate members is one of the only 2 necessary qualifiers needed to receive overrides.
All Fund My Home affiliates have to do to remain eligible for commissions, is to recruit affiliates and bring in one applicant a year.
That applicant can be a recruited affiliates, potentially creating a closed-loop pyramid scenario.
The good news is ascertaining whether this is the case is easy. What you want to ask your potential upline is out of the last three applicants they’ve generated, how many were affiliates.
It’s possible that they haven’t referred five applicants, so work with whatever number you’re given.
Note that if your potential upline hasn’t generated any applicants and they’re busy trying to recruit you, there’s a good chance they’re wanting to earn off your efforts.
And bear in mind that might be a reflection of Fund My Home’s service retail viability.
Ideally what you want to see is a split between recruited affiliate and retail applicants, weighed in favor of retail applicants.
If the majority of referred applicants are recruited affiliates, that Fund My Home affiliate is operating their business as a pyramid scheme.
And if this is widespread throughout the company, then Fund My Home itself is operating as a pyramid scheme.
Personally when we’re talking mortgages, you want full disclosure.
Fund My Home presents itself as a faceless corporation run by someone no information is provided about. The company’s marketing videos are done on the cheap with robo voices.
One last thing I’ll touch on is the legal side of the business. What Fund My Home presents and the manner in which they present is hardly convincing.
If you’re serious about obtaining a mortgage have a lawyer run through what their proposing. Property law isn’t something I have any experience in so I can’t give you any advice there myself.
Approach with caution.
Update 10th December 2021 – Following a back and forth email exchange, Carlos Burattini has disclosed that Fund My Home doesn’t pay commissions out of client fees.
FundMyHome.org DOES NOT perceive any part of the Fees above.
If we rule out client fees, naturally the follow up question is what is the source of the $3200 commission paid out?
Burattini states “we pay our Associate Members from Corporate Donations”.
A list of corporate sponsors is provided on Fund My Home’s website:
This is certainly a unique compensation model but doesn’t rule out Fund My Home operating as a pyramid scheme if the majority of clients are also affiliates.
This is stated as a possibility. When reviewing Fund My Home I didn’t see anything overtly suggesting the majority of Fund My Home clients were affiliates.