Finance leadership built for commission-driven businesses. Brought in when you need it, scaled to the work in front of you, without the cost of a full-time hire.
Led by Alejandro Franco, a two-time HousingWire Finance Leaders honoree (2023, 2025).
In the early days of your brokerage, retention didn’t feel like an existential threat. You had the momentum, the culture, and the personal relationships. You brought on hungry agents, closed transactions, took names, and measured financial health simply by checking the balance in your operating account.
Then the business grew, and the rules changed.
Your top producer walks across the street for a split you thought made zero business sense. Suddenly, a massive percentage of your deal volume disappears overnight, while your branch leases, tech stack overhead, and staff payroll stay exactly the same.
You want to offer competitive comp plans to keep your best people from leaving, but you can’t afford to wipe out your margins. You want to recruit aggressively to backfill the lost revenue, but you aren’t sure how much working capital you can burn before payroll gets dangerously tight.
Balancing producer retention while trying to scale isn’t just tough. It is the single spot where high-growth brokerages get blind-sided.
Think of Franco & Co. as your dedicated finance partner. We help you make sense of your cash flow, structure commission splits that attract top talent without crushing your margins, and hand your lenders the exact reports they want to see. Most importantly, we get out ahead of market changes so both you and your agents know exactly where the business is headed next.
Commission cycles, franchise structures, escrow and multi-entity complexity. Not a generalist stretched too thin.
Executive-level finance leadership embedded in your team. From cash flow management to board reporting, we run the function and translate it into decisions.
Rolling forecasts built around commission timing and closing volume, not a generic monthly close.
Budgets, scenarios, and decision-ready dashboards that inform the next move, not just explain the last quarter.
The financial story, and the diligence-ready detail behind it, for a raise, an acquisition, or a sale.
Whether managing an independent shop, a luxury brokerage, or multiple operating entities, you already have people entering transactions. What you need is perspective. We translate complex real estate economics into actionable strategy, helping you spot opportunities early, protect your margins, and guide your company toward its full potential.
Everyday, high-producing shops balancing agent count, splits, and high deal turnover.
You’re moving major volume, but desk fees, tech stacks, and aggressive splits eat into company dollar. You need to know which teams actually drive profit and how to recruit without risking payroll.
High-average-sale-price brokerages where deal frequency is lower, but the stakes per transaction are massive.
Long closing cycles mean cash flow is lumpy. A single delayed luxury escrow can leave you carrying heavy marketing and office overhead. We build cash buffers and forecasting to keep you stable between monster closings.
Agencies managing fast-moving escrow accounts, multi-branch operations, or underwriter audits.
Revenue swings wildly with interest rates, but payroll doesn’t. We model dynamic staffing tied to closed file volume and ensure audit-ready escrow compliance so you never get caught flat-footed.
Operators running JVs, multiple brokerage branches, affiliated title partnerships, or holding companies.
Cash gets trapped across different bank accounts, intercompany transfers become a mess, and partner distributions cause friction. We centralize entity reporting, clean up money movement, and make financials lender- and exit-ready.
We specialize exclusively in real estate services and transaction-driven businesses. If your business model doesn’t fit our playbook, we’ll let you know on the first call.
We start with where your finances stands today and what’s driving the need, then scope the engagement to your entity structure and priorities.
A focused sprint into your systems, your numbers, and how your reporting works today.
Your first full reporting package and cash flow model, built on what we found.
Recurring reporting, forecasting, and strategic support at the pace your business runs.
Clean books, reconciled and reviewed, whether your team keeps them or we do.
A rolling view of cash built around your commission cycle, not a static budget.
Regular reads on the conditions shaping your pipeline and your numbers.
Budgets, scenarios, and variance analysis tied to the decisions in front of you.
Financial infrastructure to grow into, not just what fits today.
Direct, plain-language guidance for the owners and operators making the calls.
Leadership visibility into the metrics that matter, any day of the month.
Get real key performance indicators that can help you understand & recognize your agents.
The person modeling your margins is the person advising your next decision. We work inside the tools you already use and adjust the cadence as the business does.
Alejandro Franco founded Franco & Co. to serve as the strategic, right-hand CFO real estate leaders rely on to scale with confidence. His mission is straightforward: give owners total visibility into their numbers, lock in 15%+ net profit, and turn cash flow into a war chest that funds aggressive agent recruiting and market expansion.
Backed by over a decade inside fast-growing real estate brokerages, franchises, and title operations, Alejandro doesn’t just hand you historical financial statements. He builds forward-looking models, stress-tests your commission splits, optimizes your overhead, and partners directly with you on the big decisions, ensuring every deal, hire, and expansion genuinely builds wealth and long-term enterprise value.
Arlene Aguila brings experience in bookkeeping, financial reporting, and data analysis, helping businesses maintain accurate financial records and make informed decisions. Her experience includes managing financial data, performing account reconciliations, preparing financial reports, and analyzing trends and variances.
With a strong focus on accuracy and organization, Arlene works to keep financial information reliable, up to date, and easy to understand. Her analytical approach allows her to identify trends, organize complex data, and provide meaningful insights that support daily business operations and financial planning.
Engagements are scoped to the work, not a fixed monthly fee card. After the discovery call, you'll get a proposal sized to your entity structure, reporting cadence, and the initial projects on the table, so you're paying for the finance function you actually need.
A bookkeeper closes the books. A fractional CFO uses them to make decisions: cash flow forecasting, margin analysis, capital planning, and M&A preparation. We typically work alongside your existing bookkeeping or accounting team rather than replacing it.
Yes. Most engagements start by mapping onto the systems and staff already in place, then filling the gap between clean books and decision-ready reporting.
The onboarding intensive asks the most of your team's time. Once the reporting cadence is running, most of the work happens on our side, with a standing call to keep it connected to what you're deciding.
That's where the practice is built and where we're strongest. Franchise platforms and adjacent real estate services businesses with commission-driven or multi-entity economics are a natural fit. If you're outside that lane, we'll tell you on the first call.
Franco & Co. works with firms nationwide. Most of the cadence runs remotely, with on-site time during onboarding or key projects when it helps.
Tell us where the finance function stands today, and where you need it to go.
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