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Divvy Homes is a new home-ownership platform on a mission to close the housing affordability gap by providing trusted, transparent, and simple home-ownership products for families. With Divvy’s technology, renters can choose any home on the market to live in, purchasing a percentage of their home now and buying more ownership over time.
Below is our recent interview with Brian Ma, Founder, CEO at Divvy Homes Divvy Homes:
Q: Could you provide our readers with a brief introduction to Divvy Homes?
A: 50% of renters in America (over 20M households) are cost burdened, spending the majority of their income on rent every month. With median home prices already more than 4x annual income and continuing to rise every year, home prices are running away faster than most can save. The wealth gap between renters and homeowners is unsustainable and we’re quickly becoming a nation of permanent renters not by choice, but by necessity.
With Divvy, homeownership is now accessible for everyone. Divvy is a gradual homeownership program that allows you to purchase a percentage of any home (between 2–10%) and buy more ownership over time. You only pay rent on the portion you don’t yet own and can buy the entire home at any time.
Divvy customers make monthly payments that include rent, plus an equity payment that goes towards their ownership of the home. At any point in time, the customer has the option to purchase the property outright or sell it to cash out of their equity stake after the lease term.
Through Divvy customers have the option to choose from any home for sale on the market and have access to building wealth sooner than they ever thought possible.
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Q: You have recently raised $30M could you tell us more about it?
A: After launching just last year it has become quite apparent of how much much demand there is for our product and we are eager to add fuel to the fire to accelerate growth and expand our markets. We’re very excited to partner with Andreessen Horowitz on our Series A round of funding. Their vision for a “3rd asset class” – something that’s not owning, not renting, but something in between – is closely aligned with ours and we’re eager to put the capital to work to provide more access to homeownership for more families.
Q: What’s the best thing about Divvy Homes that people might not know about?
A: Fun not well know fact: we actually started experimenting with co-ownership first with trying to organize multiple parties to split a vacation home. We were able to get a few homes to “tip”, but never actually got everyone to pull the trigger. It was hard to align the timing and motivation of all the parties involved.
Q: What advantage does your company have over its competitors?
A: -Divvy helps renters build wealth by gaining exposure to home appreciation. This means that not only are they able to save money each month, but as a part owner in the home, their savings also appreciates.
-Alt: Divvy allows renters to build wealth by gaining exposure to home appreciation. No other landlord would do this for you.
-Divvy expands a renters options to any for-sale home on the market. This drastically increases the quality and location options for our clients.
-Divvy’s technology allows us to select appreciating homes, better coordinate real estate agents and home inspections, and allows us to split monthly payments to track our resident’s homeownership percentage over time allowing them a more transparent view into their progress towards a mortgage.
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Q: What can we expect from Divvy Homes in the future?
A: Today, because we’re just getting started, we can only purchase lower-priced homes with a very simple product (a 3-year lease, with set equity builds).
In the future, we’re excited for the possibility of offering more flexible and personalized products that can be tailored for anyone’s situation as well as expanding our offering into many new markets.