A Down Payment With a Catch: You Must Be an Airbnb Host
Though consumers generally need to put up at least 20 percent of the purchase price to avoid paying mortgage insurance, first-time buyers put down far less on average — roughly 8.2 percent, or about $18,500 —
and borrow roughly $207,000, according to Inside Mortgage Finance, a publisher that tracks the mortgage business.
That was how Loftium, a service in Seattle, came about: It will provide prospective home buyers with up to $50,000 for a down payment, as long as they are willing to continuously list an extra bedroom on Airbnb for one to three years
and share most of the income with Loftium over that time.
But when she learned just how much they could collect each month — enough to cover the mortgage,
and sometimes more — her entrepreneurial instincts kicked in: Why not front would-be home buyers money for a down payment, and then collect a share of their Airbnb rental income in return?
“It’s for the people who don’t have the parents to help, or the high income to save while paying rent,” said Ms. Zhang, who founded Loftium with Adam Stelle, another entrepreneur,
and who has already had about 200 Airbnb guests in her townhouse.
“They are just stuck trying to save for a decade or more before they give up.”
Executives at Fannie Mae, the government-controlled mortgage finance giant, also noticed
that some young people perceived homeownership as an impossibility, said Jonathan Lawless, vice president of customer solutions at Fannie Mae.
This year, for example, it said it would look more forgivingly on prospective home
buyers whose employers or parents were helping pay down their student loans.