EDMONTON - ComFree is now Holowach-free.

Travis and Erin Holowach, who revolutionized Edmonton's real estate market by helping owners sell their homes privately without paying agent commissions, have sold the company to DuProprio.com, a Quebec-based company.

The Holowachs, who started out flipping houses, have been synonymous with ComFree since December 2002, when the couple bought the Edmonton and northern Alberta franchise of the company, which started in 1996 in Winnipeg.

ComFree charges a flat fee starting at $697 for a package that includes in-home consultation, legal advice, signs, and web and magazine ads. A typical real estate agent would take seven per cent of the first $100,000 of the sale price and three per cent on any amount above that.

The Edmonton franchise grew quickly as the resale market heated.

By 2007 when the market was slowing down, the Holowachs' office had expanded its staff to 71 from 33, and accounted for about 30 per cent of all homes for sale in the region, according to their numbers. A year later, in a cooled market, their staff had fallen to 58, but they still bought and moved to a new office double the size of their former location.

In February 2009, the Holowachs, along with DuProprio.com, bought the national company from the franchisor. There are offices in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba and Australia.

But last November, the couple quietly sold out to DuProprio.com.

"Most people have not heard the news," Travis said.

"We wanted to take on something on our own again. You know, when you have partners you kind of lose the control, the creative freedom and the culture that we had built up for ourselves and for our staff.

"We wanted to do something where we would have that control again."

For starters, they're selling their former ComFree offices at 8055 Argyll Rd., a 9,000-square-foot building they bought in 2008. They leased it to ComFree after they left the company, but ComFree later moved to a 3,000-square-foot office at 5236 Calgary Trail.

The Holowachs started off with a commercial real estate agent, but decided to sell the building themselves, but with a typical entrepreneurial twist -- posting a $40,000 finders fee for anyone who finds them a tenant or buyer.

"The commission that we would pay a Realtor to find us a new tenant on a five-year lease would be $45,000, so we applied $5,000 toward our own marketing effort and put $40,000 in the pocket of whoever can find us a tenant.

"It's kind of a new spin on leasing out or selling property to offer that incentive up to anybody. ... It could catch on."

Erin has joined the board of directors for the Caritas Foundation and is studying at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in a master's program for entrepreneurship.

Travis, and three partners have started LEED Demolition Inc. "It's an environmentally friendly type of demolition so we're basically doing for demolition what ComFree did for real estate."

The company finds ways to reclaim materials from the buildings it demolishes instead of dumping it at a landfill, he said. "In a typical demolition, nobody cares about the doors, door jambs and sinks. ... We take all that stuff out and we'll find a new home for it."

On top of everything else, the Holowachs also have their third child, now eight months old.

Travis says there are mixed feelings about selling a company they helped build up.

"Yeah, it's tough. I mean, it was our identity but you can't be married to your business ... when something like this happens and you leave the business, your life can't end there.

"For us, we're enjoying time with the family and plan to explore other opportunities and capitalize on some other ventures we've thought about in past years. It's time to take our philosophy and apply it to different industries."