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From Service to Startup: How W&M MBAs Built VroomBrick to Rethink the Cost of Buying a Home

When Navy veteran Leland Remias crossed the stage for his Â鶹Æƽâ°æ MBA in 2024, he was already carrying the idea that would become his company. Military families move on Permanent Change of Station orders every two to three years, and each move came with the same quiet cost: thousands of dollars in real estate commission leaving with every home sale, money his family needed for the next base. For the people who serve, it added up to a silent tax on their equity, charged again and again for work that never really changed.

That frustration became VroomBrick.

VroomBrick is a real estate technology platform that connects home buyers and sellers with independent licensed closing attorneys, showing agents, and lenders for a 1% technology fee instead of the traditional 3% agent commission. It is not a brokerage, and it does not represent buyers or sellers. Instead, it provides a step-by-step dashboard that guides a transaction from listing to closing, and it connects people with the licensed professionals they would hire anyway. On a $500,000 home, the difference is plain: a traditional 3% seller's agent commission is $15,000, while VroomBrick's fee is $5,000. Commissions are negotiable, and actual savings vary by transaction.

What sets the founders apart is that they did not come to the problem as outsiders. Before VroomBrick, Remias worked as a licensed agent with Sotheby's, and so did co-founder and Chief Operating Officer Justin Richardson. Between them, they had sold homes the traditional way and understood exactly where the commission model did and did not add value.

"I knew exactly which parts of that commission paid for real work and which parts could use automation to make the process more efficient," Remias says.

The Â鶹Æƽâ°æ connection runs throughout the company. Remias built VroomBrick after taking part in the university's Veteran Startup Challenge and winning the Entrepreneurship Hub's Rocket Pitch Faceoff. Head of Partnerships Tim Piatt, an Army veteran, earned his Â鶹Æƽâ°æ MBA in 2025. This summer, three W&M students are interning with the company, and Remias has returned to campus as a guest on the Hub's podcast.

"Frequent moves through the military mean disproportionate fees. I kept thinking there had to be a better way to do this," Remias says.

The model the team landed on borrows from a tool most people already trust with something equally intimidating: their taxes.

"VroomBrick is built to be the TurboTax of real estate," says Piatt. "TurboTax did not replace tax law or accountants. It gave people the tools to handle what they could, and expert help for what they could not. That is exactly what we do for a home sale."

Turning that idea into something a first-time buyer or seller can actually use has fallen largely to co-founder and Head of Product Adam Becerra, who leads the platform experience. The result is deliberately not a do-it-yourself gamble. Sellers are not left to handle closing paperwork or show a home alone. A licensed closing attorney handles the contract, title, and settlement. Independent showing agents provide property access. Lender partners handle financing. The platform removes the percentage markup, not the professionals.

The founders describe VroomBrick less as a discount than as a correction.

"We are not trying to talk anyone out of professional help," Piatt says. "You still need a closing attorney, you still need showing agents. We just do not think the price of that help should climb every time home values go up."

For a veteran-owned and minority-owned company, that mission is personal. The households most squeezed by transaction costs, first-time buyers, military families moving every few years on orders, and anyone watching every dollar, are the ones VroomBrick was built to serve.

The company has grown alongside the region's startup community. It was selected for Lighthouse Labs Batch 18, joined the 757 Accelerate 2025 cohort as a REaKTOR portfolio company, and completed the CAFE accelerator focused on financial equity. Today VroomBrick operates across Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina, and it is expanding how it reaches people earlier, including work with credit unions to support future homebuyers before they are ready to apply for a mortgage.

The through line has not changed since the first move that started it. Give people the tools and the licensed professionals to run their own transaction, and let them keep the equity that once disappeared into a percentage.

Learn more at vroombrick.com.