StayFrank Promises You Can "Stay." The Fine Print Says Otherwise.

StayFrank. That's the name. "Stay Frank." As in "stay in your home." As in "we'll be frank with you." A company named after two promises it makes on the landing page and then slowly walks back in the FAQ.

I'm a duck. I read FAQs for fun. I read the fine print for sport. And I spent this week reading everything StayFrank has published — website, disclosures, press, reviews — looking for the part where they tell you what happens when the lease is up and you can't buy the house back at a number you didn't agree to upfront.

I'm still looking.

What StayFrank says it does

The pitch is simple. You own a home. You need cash. StayFrank connects you with an investor who buys your house, gives you the equity as cash, and lets you lease it back. You stay. You get paid. You figure things out. Two to five years.

On the surface, that's a sale-leaseback. A perfectly legitimate financial instrument. Investopedia has the textbook version — Fortune 500 CFOs have been running this play for decades. Walgreens did a $5 billion one in 2019. Nobody called it a scam.

The difference is Walgreens had lawyers. Walgreens read the buyback clause. Walgreens knew who was on the other side of the table.

Do you?

StayFrank says "fair cash offer, no hidden fees." The FTC says sale-leasebacks come with "hefty fees, exorbitant rent, and even eviction." Somebody is not being frank.

— Quacky, on company names that age poorly

The seven things I couldn't find on their website

I went through every page on stayfrank.com. Every FAQ. Every "How It Works" animation. Here's what's missing:

1. The exact buyback price. They say you can buy your home back "at a percentage of market value." What percentage? 80%? 90%? 110%? They don't say. The number that determines whether you ever get your house back is the one number they won't put on the website.
2. The rent escalation formula. Rent is set at "market rates for comparable properties in your area." Great. Market rates go up. How much? How often? Capped or uncapped? Not disclosed.
3. The early exit fee. If you need to leave before the lease ends, StayFrank charges a lease-break fee that "varies based on home value and remaining lease period." That's not a disclosure. That's a blank check.
4. Who the actual buyer is. StayFrank connects you with "trusted investor partners." Who? What fund? What balance sheet? Are they the same investors who backed EasyKnock before it evaporated? Unknown.
5. Audited transaction volume. How many deals has StayFrank closed? How many homeowners have completed a full lease term? How many bought back? The website doesn't say. The Google reviews — approximately seven of them — don't help either.
6. A standardized lease template. You can't read the lease before you start the process. You have to call. You have to qualify. You have to give them your information before they show you the contract. That is not how transparency works.
7. What happens if StayFrank shuts down. No successor-entity clause visible. No bankruptcy provision. No "here's who owns your lease if we disappear." After EasyKnock, this isn't paranoia. It's due diligence.

Seven questions. Zero answers on the website. And this is the company that put "Frank" in its name.

The FTC already told you

In October 2024, the Federal Trade Commission published a consumer alert titled "Risky Business" — specifically about residential sale-leaseback deals. Not about one company. About the model.

Here's what the FTC said, and I'm quoting:

"The risks — often hidden in the fine print of complicated contracts — include hefty fees, exorbitant rent, and even eviction from your home if you can't afford to pay the rent when it goes up."

Read that again. The federal government is telling you that this business model — the exact business model StayFrank operates — comes with the risk of being evicted from your own home. Not "the risk of a bad deal." The risk of losing the house you already owned, that you sold specifically to keep living in.

The FTC also noted that unlike mortgages, sale-leasebacks don't trigger Truth in Lending Act disclosures, rate caps, or Dodd-Frank ability-to-repay rules. There is no federal safety net. You are a renter with a handshake.

The FTC's alert came out two months before EasyKnock died. If you think that's a coincidence, I have a pond in Jersey I'd like to sell you.

— Quacky, connecting dots for free

The review desert

I looked for public reviews of StayFrank. Here is what I found: roughly seven Google reviews averaging about 4 stars. Seven.

Seven reviews for a company that buys houses. Houses. The largest financial asset most Americans will ever own. And the public record of their customer experience is seven Google reviews.

For context: the taco truck on my block has forty-three reviews. A company asking you to sign over the deed to your home has seven.

StayFrank has been operating since 2022. Their founders claim experience in sale-leaseback acquisitions going back to 2003. If that's true — if they've been doing this for twenty years — where are the homeowners? Where are the year-three stories? Where are the buyback success rates?

Silence is not a review. Silence is the thing that happens before the LendEDU ranking article fills the void with affiliate copy.

The geographic tell

StayFrank operates in twelve states: Arizona, Nevada, Colorado, Texas, Kansas, Missouri, Indiana, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and North Carolina.

Notice what's missing? California. New York. Massachusetts. Illinois.

Those are the states with the strongest consumer protection laws. Massachusetts is the state that fined EasyKnock $200,000 and forced them out. Connecticut's Attorney General called EasyKnock's practices "oppressive, unethical, immoral, and unscrupulous" — then sued.

StayFrank doesn't operate in any of those states. Maybe it's a coincidence. Maybe the housing markets don't work. Or maybe — and I'm just a duck speculating — it's easier to operate a sale-leaseback program in states where the regulatory framework hasn't caught up to the product yet. If the bank won't touch your equity without a stack of disclosures, ask yourself why StayFrank can do it with a phone call.

The NPR receipts

NPR investigated the sale-leaseback industry in 2024. Not StayFrank specifically — EasyKnock. But the findings apply to the model:

1. In the Texas counties analyzed, most homeowners who received eviction notices fell behind on rent within two years.
2. For roughly 25% of people, eviction proceedings began less than one year after signing.
3. Deals cost homeowners "tens of thousands of dollars in equity."
4. Customers "rarely buy back their homes as the deals allow."

Rarely. Buy. Back. The buyback option — the thing StayFrank puts on the marketing page, the thing that makes the whole pitch work, the reason you sign — is a statistical myth. NPR found that homeowners almost never exercise it. Either the price is wrong, the timing is wrong, or the homeowner's financial situation hasn't improved enough to qualify for a mortgage on a house they already owned.

StayFrank promises you can buy your house back. I promise you I can dunk a basketball. Both statements are technically true and practically meaningless.

StayFrank's buyback option is like a gym membership in January. It exists. It's in the contract. Nobody uses it. The company knows this.

— Quacky, on contractual decoration

What I'd need to see before I stop quacking

I'm not saying StayFrank is a scam. I'm saying StayFrank is a company that asks homeowners to sign over the deed to their house and doesn't publish the numbers that would let you evaluate whether that's a good idea. So here's the list. StayFrank, if you're reading this — and you will be — here's what would shut me up:

1. Publish the buyback price formula. On the website. Before sign-up. Not in the contract you show after the phone call.
2. Publish the rent escalation cap. If there is one. If there isn't, say that too.
3. Publish the early exit fee schedule. Dollar amounts. Not "varies."
4. Name the investors. Fund name, AUM, track record. Let homeowners Google the people who will own their house.
5. Publish audited buyback completion rates. What percentage of homeowners who entered a StayFrank lease actually bought their home back? If you're proud of the number, publish it. If you're not, that tells us more than the number would.
6. Publish the successor-entity clause. Who holds the lease if StayFrank shuts down? After EasyKnock, this is a non-negotiable disclosure.

I'm offering the same thing I offer every company I name in a Quack Take: right of reply. Send us the data. We'll publish it in full, unedited, as an update to this piece. The email is on the site. The duck is waiting. For what a homeowner-first equity-access deal actually looks like, Sell2Rent has the real-numbers version.

What to do this week

1. If you're in the StayFrank pipeline — pause. Don't sign anything until you've read the FTC alert. Here's the link. Print it out.
2. Ask StayFrank every question in my "seven things" list. In writing. If they won't answer in writing, that's your answer.
3. Run your numbers on the comparator. See what a sale-leaseback costs side by side — with published terms, not "call us" terms.
4. Call a housing counselor. Free. HUD-certified. They work for you, not the investor. Find one through the CFPB here.
5. If the math still says sale-leaseback, run the quiz. Quacky approved.

The company is called StayFrank. The duck is the one being frank. Think about that.