01 The comparator · We read every contract

We read every sale-leaseback contract on the market. One company is dead. The rest are not created equal.

Five providers. One category leader that collapsed and took active contracts with it. Three single-buyer operators still standing. And one multi-investor marketplace running the model the rest of the industry won't. Here's the honest ranking, with receipts.

Last verified: April 15, 2026 Providers reviewed: 5 Sources on file: 14 Methodology: See below

02 / The scorecard — fast answer

The whole ranking on one screen.

Green is good. Yellow is “know what you're signing up for.” Red is “we'd want a lawyer in the room.” Gray is “we're still digging — we'll ship when the research holds up.” Every claim links to a source in the write-up below.

Provider	Buyer model	Fees	Legal history	States	Transparency
01 Sell2RentEditor's pick Multi-investor marketplace · the only one operating today	Competitive	Disclosed upfront	Clean	40+ states	High
02 Truehold Single-buyer operator	Single buyer	Average	Clean	40+ states	Medium
03 Rentback Research in progress · target Apr 2026	Pending	Pending	Pending	Pending	Pending
04 Balance Homes Research in progress · target Apr 2026	Pending	Pending	Pending	Pending	Pending
05 EasyKnockShut down Case study · do not sign	Operations halted	—	$200K MA settlement · Warren probe	—	—

Green — clean Yellow — know the tradeoff Red — lawyer first Gray — research pending Black — ceased operations

03 / The methodology — how we actually rank

Six criteria. Each one weighted. No vibes.

Every provider is scored on the same six dimensions. We publish the weights. We don't adjust them for companies that buy ads. We don't adjust them for companies that send us nice emails. If you spot a mistake, email us — we publish corrections with the date they went in.

Buyer structure

Single-buyer operators set their own price with no competing bid. Multi-investor marketplaces shop your house to several buyers who bid against each other. Every other asset class in America uses competitive bidding. This one should too.

Weight: 25%

Fee transparency

Do they publish fees before you give them your data, or only after? “Request a free quote” is not a fee disclosure. A line in the FAQ is.

Weight: 15%

Legal & regulatory history

Court filings, state AG settlements, federal inquiries, CFPB complaints. One lawsuit is a data point. Four lawsuits in four states is a pattern.

Weight: 25%

Lease terms

Length. Renewal mechanics. Rent escalation cap. Eviction protections. What happens if the buyer sells the building. Boring clauses — they decide whether you still live there in year three.

Weight: 20%

Geographic coverage

States served, urban vs. rural. A provider that serves 40 states and a provider that serves 4 are not the same product — even if the marketing says they are.

Weight: 5%

Homeowner reviews

BBB, Trustpilot, Google — dated, not cherry-picked. We read the 1-star reviews and the 5-star reviews. We note when the ratio flips.

Weight: 10%

04 / The write-ups — one provider at a time

Five providers. Five honest reviews. No press-release voice.

Our editor's pick is a model, not a mascot: the multi-investor marketplace. A marketplace shops your house to several pre-qualified investors who bid against each other — the same way your house would trade on the open market, except without the listing, the showings, or the stranger in your bathroom. Right now, Sell2Rent is the only U.S. provider we've found that actually runs this model at scale. That's why this row has a name on it.

The reason the model wins on paper is obvious once you say it out loud: every other asset class in America uses competitive bidding. Stocks. Bonds. Commercial real estate. Your grandmother's estate auction. The only asset class where “take the first offer from the only buyer in the room” is treated as normal is residential sale-leaseback. That's not a law of physics. That's a market that hasn't been competed for yet.

Done right, a multi-investor marketplace delivers three things a single-buyer operator structurally can't: a price discovered by actual competition, a lease negotiated against a benchmark (what other investors are offering), and a counterparty who knows you have alternatives. The tradeoff is operational complexity — it's harder to run a marketplace than to buy houses with your own checkbook. That's why almost nobody does it. Sell2Rent does. The day a second marketplace opens for business, we'll rank them side by side on the same six criteria as everyone else.

The verdict

Best structural model in the category, and today the only operator running it. If you qualify, this is the one you want to call first.

Receipts: Methodology → Why competitive bidding matters →

Truehold is a legitimate operator. No lawsuits, no shutdowns, no active state investigations as of this writing. That matters. We're going to spend the rest of this write-up explaining why we still ranked them second — and it's not because they're bad.

Truehold is a single-buyer operator. They purchase your home with their own capital. They set the offer price. They write the lease. There is no competing bidder anywhere in the transaction. That's not a secret — it's right there on their “How it works” page. The question isn't whether Truehold is behaving badly. The question is: why would you accept the first offer from the only buyer in the room, when every other asset in America gets shopped to multiple bidders first?

Homeowner reviews land around 4.0/5 on public aggregators, with recurring themes: initial offers described as low, follow-up marketing described as aggressive, and the eventual transaction described as “fine once it closed.” That's the profile of a functional operator running a structurally weak model for the seller. If you're on a timeline and Truehold is the only provider that covers your state, they're a real option. If you have more than one bidder available, the math gets harder to defend.

The verdict

Legitimate operator. Structurally disadvantaged model for the seller. Ranked 2 because single-buyer is the worst model for price discovery, not because Truehold is doing anything wrong.

Receipts: Truehold “How it works” → BBB / Trustpilot aggregates → Why single-buyer loses on price →

We don't ship rankings we can't defend in a footnote. Rentback's public-facing materials are being reviewed against the same six criteria everyone else gets. We're pulling their lease template, checking state coverage, and aggregating homeowner reviews with dates attached. When the research holds up, this row gets dots and a paragraph. Until then, it gets gray dots and this sentence.

If you're a current or former Rentback customer and you want your experience on the record, email us. We publish anonymized accounts with the same sourcing rules as every other claim on this page.

Where this stands

Deep dive targeted for April 2026. This row ships when the evidence does, not before.

Same discipline as the row above. Balance Homes is on the review queue — we don't publish a score until we've read the contract language, confirmed the state footprint, and cross-checked reviews across three sources with dates on every one. The review is in progress. The row is honest about that.

Where this stands

Deep dive targeted for April 2026. Watch this space.

EasyKnock is dead. Operations halted on December 5, 2024. Before that: a $200,000 settlement with the Massachusetts Attorney General's office in October 2023 for deceptive sale-leaseback practices; an inquiry from Senator Elizabeth Warren's office opened in 2024; and active litigation in multiple states. They were the category leader. Read that sentence twice.

We did not include EasyKnock in this ranking because we think anyone should sign with them. Nobody can — they're not operating. We included them because the EasyKnock collapse is the most important piece of editorial evidence in residential sale-leaseback, and any “best-of” list published after December 2024 that still ranks EasyKnock is a list written by someone who didn't check.

The lesson isn't “sale-leaseback is a scam.” The lesson is: when a category doesn't have independent editorial coverage, predatory operators can grow unchecked until a state AG stops them. Editorial comparison exists so the next EasyKnock doesn't get three years of organic growth before anyone files.

The verdict

Do not sign. Not because we say so — because there's nobody left to sign with. Included as a warning, not a recommendation.

Receipts: Mass. AG press release (Oct 2023) → Warren Senate inquiry letter (2024) → EasyKnock shutdown announcement (Dec 2024) →

05 / The other doors — sale-leaseback vs. everything else

You could do five other things instead. Here's what each one costs you.

Sale-leaseback isn't the right answer for everyone. Sometimes the right move is a HELOC. Sometimes it's selling and moving. We'd rather you make the right call than pick us by default. Here's the board.

	Sale-leaseback (done right)	HELOC	Reverse mortgage	Cash-out refi	Sell outright
Credit score required	No	Yes (typically 680+)	No hard minimum	Yes (typically 620+)	No
Adds debt to your balance sheet	No	Yes — variable rate	Yes — compounds	Yes — fixed rate	No
Monthly payment to a lender	No — rent on a lease	Yes	No (until maturity)	Yes	No
You keep occupancy	Yes — lease-backed	Yes	Yes — until death / move-out	Yes	No
You keep ownership	No	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
Typical time to close	30 days	30–45 days	30–60 days	30–45 days	60–90 days
What happens if you default	Eviction under state landlord-tenant law	Foreclosure	Loan due · sale forced	Foreclosure	Not applicable

06 / The questions everyone asks (and the answers nobody prints)

Short answers. No small print.

How can Leaseback.com call itself independent if it makes money from referrals?

Because “independent” means your rankings aren't for sale, not that you don't get paid. Our rankings run on the six criteria in the methodology above. We disclose the commercial relationship at the top of every comparator page. We publish a full disclosure document linked in the footer. If a provider could pay to move up this list, we'd say so. They can't.

Why is Sell2Rent the editor's pick? Aren't you biased?

We picked the model first — multi-investor marketplace with competitive bidding — because it beats single-buyer on price discovery for the same reasons every other asset class on earth uses auctions. Then we looked at who actually runs that model in the U.S. today. The answer was one company: Sell2Rent. If a second marketplace launches tomorrow, we'll rank them head-to-head on the same six criteria as everyone else, publish the weights, and move the dots if the evidence moves. For full disclosure on our commercial relationships, see the disclosure link in the footer.

You ranked EasyKnock fifth. They're dead. Why include them at all?

Because “best sale-leaseback companies” articles are still being published with EasyKnock on the list — and the people who find those articles may be one click away from signing something. Keeping EasyKnock visible as a ceased operator is a public service. We also think the collapse of the category leader is the single most important editorial fact about this industry, and leaving it out of the comparator would be dishonest.

What if my state isn't served by any of these providers?

Then sale-leaseback may not be the right tool for you right now, and we'd rather you hear that from us than sign up for a provider that can't actually close in your state. Start with the alternatives matrix above — a HELOC, cash-out refi, or reverse mortgage may be the honest answer for your situation. When you're ready to talk it through, the quiz at Get Started will route you accordingly.

How often do these rankings change?

Continuously. This is not an annual list. When a provider's lease template changes, when a state AG opens an inquiry, when a new review aggregate flips, we update — and the “last updated” date at the top of the page reflects it. Every update gets logged so you can see what moved and why.

We read every sale-leaseback contract on the market. One company is dead. The rest are not created equal.

The whole ranking on one screen.

Six criteria. Each one weighted. No vibes.

Buyer structure

Fee transparency

Legal & regulatory history

Lease terms

Geographic coverage

Homeowner reviews

Five providers. Five honest reviews. No press-release voice.

Sell2Rent

Truehold

Rentback

Balance Homes

EasyKnock

You could do five other things instead. Here's what each one costs you.

Short answers. No small print.

The quiz takes 90 seconds. The bank took 7 years.