A military family's guide to veteran-owned real estate in Virginia: why it matters, how a 1% technology fee works, and how to keep more equity on every PCS move.
Military families in Virginia move more than almost anyone, and every move quietly costs a few percent of a home's value in commissions. On a $500,000 home, a traditional 3% seller's agent commission is $15,000. Do that across three duty stations and the number stops being a line item and starts looking like a down payment left on the table. A veteran-owned option exists specifically to stop that leak.
There is a difference between a veteran who sells real estate and a company built by veterans to fix the cost of the process itself.
VroomBrick is a veteran-owned and minority-owned real estate technology platform, founded by a Navy veteran who spent years buying and selling on the military's timeline. It operates in Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina. Being built by people who moved on orders is not a marketing line. It shapes the product: the process is designed around PCS deadlines, Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) loans, and remote closings from a new duty station, because those are the situations the founders lived through.
That matters because military families are not the average seller. You are often working backward from a fixed report date, sometimes managing the sale from a different time zone, and doing it more than once in a few years.
Here is the math on a single sale, and why it stings more for a family that moves often.
On a $500,000 home, a traditional 3% seller's agent commission is $15,000. With VroomBrick's 1% technology fee, that same seller pays $5,000. The difference, $10,000, stays with you instead of leaving at closing. Across VroomBrick's 2026 closings, members saved an average of about $15,000 per transaction, and some saved nearly $30,000.
Now multiply that by a career. A family that sells three homes across three assignments can pay the traditional commission three times. The work of listing a home does not change much between a $300,000 house and a $600,000 one, but the percentage-based fee climbs with the price every time. That is the specific thing a veteran-owned platform was built to correct.
The obvious worry is that a lower fee means you are on your own. You are not.
VroomBrick is a technology platform, not a brokerage, and it does not represent buyers or sellers. What it gives you is the software and the connections to the licensed professionals you would hire anyway:
This is not for-sale-by-owner. You are not showing the home alone or figuring out closing paperwork yourself. The platform removes the percentage markup, not the professionals.
If you are buying, your VA loan benefit is one of the strongest tools in real estate: many qualifying service members buy with no down payment. That loan is handled by a lender, not by VroomBrick, and you can use it on a home you buy through the platform.
The savings work differently on the buy side. After the 2024 National Association of Realtors (NAR) settlement, buyer-agent compensation is negotiated separately and is no longer bundled into the sale automatically. With VroomBrick, the seller pays the 1% technology fee, and the difference from a traditional buyer-side commission can come back to you as a credit toward closing costs. For a family already covering a move, that credit is real money at the table. You can see how the VA loan fits in the Virginia veterans VA loan guide.
Selling on PCS orders is its own discipline: decide sell-or-rent fast, list as early as orders allow, set up a power of attorney before you leave, and plan for a remote closing. That deserves its own playbook, and it has one. Rather than repeat it here, see the full PCS selling timeline, which walks through the compressed schedule, remote signing, and the capital-gains rule that protects many military sellers.
For a veteran-owned and minority-owned company, keeping transaction costs down is not an abstract goal. The households most squeezed by real estate fees, first-time buyers, military families on repeat moves, and anyone watching every dollar, are the exact people this platform was built to serve.
The point is not to talk anyone out of professional help. You still need a closing attorney and showing agents. The argument is narrower: the price of that help should not climb every time home values do, and military families should not pay that climbing fee more often than anyone else.
The fastest way to know if this fits your situation is to run your home value through the savings calculator. It takes 30 seconds and shows the exact dollar difference between a traditional 3% seller's agent commission and VroomBrick's 1% technology fee. From there, explore the Virginia veterans resources, see how selling works, or learn what is available across Virginia.
Keep Your $10,000. We'll Handle the Rest.
About VroomBrick: VroomBrick is a real estate technology platform, not a licensed real estate brokerage. VroomBrick does not provide brokerage services, represent buyers or sellers, or hold real estate licenses. The 1% technology fee covers platform access; closing attorneys, showing agents, and lender partners are independent licensed professionals. Commissions are not set by law and are fully negotiable. Savings examples are illustrative; actual savings vary by transaction.
About the Author
MBA · Army Veteran
Head of Partnerships at VroomBrick. Writes about how homeowners can keep more of their equity, what the post-NAR-settlement market actually looks like, and how to navigate buying or selling without paying a 3% commission.
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