They served the country. Now one vet wants them to own a piece of it

Travis Winfield knows how to use a financial weapon that most veterans never fire.

Only about 13 percent of eligible veterans have taken advantage of their VA home loan benefits, Winfield said, despite homeownership being one of the most accessible tools available to build wealth.

Winfield is a 24-year Navy veteran and the founder of Military Operated Real Estate (MORE), a certification and referral network for agents serving military families. The company launched publicly in December and has since grown to 105 certified agents in 35 states, covering 73 percent of the nation’s 215 military installations, Winfield said.

Owning a piece of it

For Winfield, the case for homeownership starts with what people actually need to survive.

“There are just a few things you have to have in life,” Winfield said. “You need food, you need housing and you need some medical help.”

For those who have served, he said, that need comes with a number of tools that most people never use. Less than 1 percent of Americans have ever volunteered to serve, Winfield said, yet only about 13 percent of eligible veterans have used their VA home loans — a gap he attributes in part to a literacy crisis within the military community itself.

That gap has real consequences. Winfield described an arrangement in which a disabled veteran was willing to sell his home to finance his son’s college tuition—unaware that California offers free tuition at state universities to dependents of disabled veterans. Once Winfield shared that information, the family no longer had to sell.

That moment, he said, is why MORE trains its agents to function alongside real estate professionals as benefits experts — not only to close transactions, but also to surface the tools their clients already have.

“If you serve your country, you deserve to own a part of it,” Winfield said, attributing the sentiment to a phrase he has heard others use.

Active duty service members also have access to an expanded capital gains exemption that most buyers don’t have, Winfield said, one of the many benefits service members have access to that most are unaware of, as are many officers.

“What if I told you there’s a strategy where you can buy a house at any duty station, and by the time you get out of the military, I can make you a million overnight,” Winfield said.

A gap in the market

The idea for MORE took shape over about a decade, Winfield said, after noticing a gap in trusted national brands serving military families.

“Name a national brand you can trust as a military member or military family when it comes to real estate,” Winfield said. “It doesn’t really exist.”

Winfield cited Navy Federal Credit Union and USAA as examples of what that trust looks like in banking and insurance — institutions that, he said, hold about 92 percent of the market share among military families in those categories because they specialize and speak the language of the community. According to him, there is no equivalent in the real estate sector.

Part of the problem, Winfield said, is that military life presents a set of circumstances that most civilian officers have never encountered: moves every two to three years on orders, purchases made sight unseen from abroad, differences in time zones that complicate communications and financial decisions that often have to be made faster than the market allows.

“You don’t know what it’s like to serve unless you’ve actually served,” Winfield said.

Raising the standard

MORE requires proof of military affiliation before an agent can apply for certification, including a DD-214, military ID, or documentation proving dependent status. Agents then complete 35 hours of a proprietary curriculum and must show at least three VA loan transactions before they can carry the MORE certification, Winfield said.

Winfield contrasted that standard with the National Association of Realtors’ Military Relocation Professional certification, which he said does not require military affiliation or transaction history.

“I’m not really okay with that,” Winfield said. “So we’re raising that standard.”

The curriculum goes beyond transactional mechanics, Winfield said. Agents learn how military pay structures work, how to handle time zone differences with foreign customers and how to facilitate invisible purchases – a common reality for families receiving orders abroad.

Built-in responsibility

Certification is not a rubber stamp, Winfield said. Agents who violate MORE’s ethics policy will not be unilaterally removed; they face a board of their peers, structured according to military disciplinary processes.

“We’re going to create a board of your peers, just like we do in the military, and they’re going to determine your fate, not me,” Winfield said.

MORE is also building in a consumer-facing quality control component, Winfield said. After a transaction is completed, the company contacts the veteran or military family directly to verify that their experience meets the standard expected of a MORE-certified agent — functioning, he said, as a check on the network, independent of the transaction itself.

The first cohort of agents to go through the certification process had a 50 percent attrition rate, Winfield said — something he described as a hallmark rather than a flaw.

“This isn’t for everyone,” Winfield said. “I want to set the standard where service members want to recognize us as the gold standard.”

His measure of success, he said, will come when officers who previously declined certification start coming back.

“It’ll be when that one officer knocks on my door who said no before,” Winfield said. “It’s like I just had a client who wouldn’t hire me because I’m not certified with MORE.”

Spouses and service members

MORE has also developed programs aimed at two groups that Winfield says have been largely overlooked by the industry: military spouses and transitioning service members.

The More Ambassador Program licenses military spouses as referral agents in a single state, allowing them to earn 25 percent of the commission on transactions they facilitate by connecting relocating families with MORE-certified agents at the next duty station, Winfield said.

The program is built around a structural problem, he said: Unemployment among military spouses is five to seven times the national average, driven by the relentless cycle of moves that makes building a sustainable career nearly impossible.

“Who do you rely on for recommendations when moving from one duty station to another?” Winfield said. “Your co-husbands.”

The company is also active as a SkillBridge sponsor. The Department of Defense program offers servicemembers the opportunity to train with civilian employers during their last three to six months of active duty instead of reporting for duty. MORE’s sponsorship allows transitioning service members to embed themselves with real estate teams in the network, Winfield said, building their business before they ever say goodbye to the service.

Email Jessi Healey