In an era of high mortgage rates and stagnant home sales, a real estate transaction model is making waves by reintroducing and standardizing a once-popular financing method.
Ryan Leahy, the founder of MORE Seller Financing, said his company has created the first nationwide platform to bring consistency, compliance and clarity to seller financing — a practice that has been relatively diminished in the mainstream market.
“We are the very first company in the country to standardize the seller financing process, put a wrapper around it, brand it and call it MORE,” Leahy told HousingWire. “And we show sellers how to get more money for their home, and we show buyers how to buy more home for less money.”
Modern bridge for buyers, sellers
Seller financing, a method by which a home seller provides direct financing to the buyer, saw popularity in the 1980s and ’90s when traditional interest rates soared. Today, Leahy sees a similar affordability crisis.
“Why is the real estate market stuck right now? Most people think it’s because of interest rates,” Leahy said. “Every single buyer I ask, ‘Would you buy a home today if you could get a 5% rate with no points, streamline underwriting, closing fast?’ Every single one of them says, ‘Absolutely.’”
MORE’s model offers a short-term bridge loan — typically around three years in length — that’s designed to give buyers time to refinance or secure permanent financing.
“We’ve done them as short as six months and as long as seven years. It’s totally dependent upon the buyer and seller,” Leahy said. “But we recommend three years as a starting point.”
According to Note Investor, there were 89,890 real estate transactions completed in 2024 using seller financing — up slightly from 2023. These sales represented $30.3 billion in volume, an 8% year-over-year increase.
Over the past decade, the number of seller-financed deals has consistently ranged between 83,000 and 116,000 per year.
More than two-thirds of last year’s transactions occurred in only 10 states, with Texas accounting for 25.1% on its own. Seller financing spans residential, commercial and land transactions, with residential making up 63% of all deals over the past three years, Note Investor reported.
Client profiles
Though the affordability issue impacts a broad range of buyers, MORE is currently focused on higher-end homes.
“Our target audience is $600,000 and up,” Leahy said. “It seems that people that are buying $600,000 and up have financial literacy to where they get it right away. It seems that (buyers of lower-priced homes) just don’t have the 20% to put down.”
Leahy emphasized that his company’s approach helps individuals who don’t fit the traditional lending mold.
“I’ve helped a lot of divorcees who have terrible credit and people that are a few months out of bankruptcy get into a home. Credit score isn’t everything,” he said. “They’ve got $500,000 in the bank, they make $200,000 a year, they got their stuff together. They just had life happen. Maybe a car accident or a similar event wiped them out.”
Bad rap for wraps
At the center of MORE’s offering is the legal structure known as a seller financing wrap — or “wraparound mortgage.”
“From 2007 to 2013, wraps got a really bad rap because the sellers got in financial trouble and kept the buyer’s money and didn’t make the mortgage payments,” Leahy explained. “Ultimately, the house went into foreclosure. Buyers who had never been late got foreclosed on.”
To avoid these issues, MORE integrates professional servicing and legal safeguards.
“We have a servicing company that comes in,” Leahy said. “We have a law firm that’s closed more than 25,000 of these transactions, and never had a due-on-sale clause.”
According to Leahy, his team includes 16 full-time professionals and three separate law firms that constructed the program with guidance from industry attorneys and regulatory experts.
“In 2022, the state of Texas became the first state in the U.S. to add seller financing and wraps to the Texas property code,” he said. “I took that framework and used it as the basis for the entire United States. This can solve so much pain around the country for affordability.”
Best of both worlds, eXp partnership
The idea behind MORE is rooted in Leahy’s extensive mortgage background.
With more than two decades of experience and 300,000-plus transactions under his belt, Leahy said he aimed to fuse an institutional lending structure with the flexibility of creative finance.
“What I did is I married the best practices of conventional lending and best practices of seller financing and brought them together,” he said.
Next week, MORE will formally launch its seller financing partnership with eXp Luxury — the high-end division of eXp Realty.
Leahy said this rollout will help introduce the program to more sellers of luxury properties who are struggling to find qualified buyers in a tight lending market.
“Every single buyer is preapproved through MORE Lending,” Leahy explained. “We structure the transaction, make sure through our law firm that it’s legal, compliant, enforceable, then we bring the transaction together.”
Rates for buyers through MORE’s model typically hover between 3.99% to 4.25%, depending on the seller’s underlying mortgage and flexibility.
“There are tens of thousands of sellers that are willing to offer you a below-5% interest rate today,” Leahy said. “Why are you waiting?”
First Time Home Buyer FAQs - Via HousingWire.com
