Rentals make the housing crisis worse. More home rental units mean more young families are excluded from achieving housing stability, building lasting wealth and participating meaningfully in the financial system.

The Federal Reserve reports that homeowners have a staggering 40x the net worth of renters, a devastating number for those unable to buy homes nor the big ticket items that homes typically leverage. Today, the equity that lucky, current homeowners rely on for that leverage is skyrocketing. As of March 2023, homeowners with a mortgage had an average of $185k in leverageable equity  – a 54% increase from 2020 (!) – while renters suffered paying more rent than ever. As more millennials are excluded from homeownership, the generational impact is plain: Millennials today hold just 4.8% of all wealth, 2% of which belongs to Mark Zuckerberg alone. As Millennials enter their 40s, we’re reminded that, at that age, Gen X had 9% while Baby Boomers had 21%. 

It’s no secret that institutional investors whose strategies are to build- or buy- to rent make up a large swath of home purchases nation-wide. This is particularly acute for the entry-level, lower-priced home category. According to Redfin, low-priced homes made up 48% of investor purchases in Q12023. Investors have scooped up lower-priced properties as mortgage rates have increased, making it harder for first-time buyers to enter the market. In total, Redfin found that  investors purchased 25% of all low-priced homes in the tracked metros in Q12023 – a hugely frustrating phenomenon for individual homebuyers. Just recently, The Wall Street Journal reported that a major New York investment firm, Pretium, seeks to invest $1.5bn into 4,000 new rental properties. Add to this an existing supply crisis at the entry level, where housing completions accounted for 35% of all housing completions in 1970 and now makes up less than 10%. Now, there are a growing number of opportunities for retail investors to invest in rental properties via ultra-accessible fractional real estate investment platforms. For those who seek to add real estate exposure to their portfolios in an environment where it’s hard to grab it the old-fashioned way, this growth means potentially reliable income streams. But makes it increasingly difficult for young families to achieve housing stability, building real wealth and the opportunity to participate meaningfully in the financial system. 

Meanwhile, for many families, renting isn’t such a great deal. Unlike homeowners who build equity with every mortgage payment, every rent check simply burns cash, eating into savings for a down payment while offering none of the tax advantages afforded homeowners. To get an average-priced unit, renters nationally now need to allocate upwards of 30% of their income – the highest rent-to-income ratio in 20 years. And new landlords can be pretty nasty: Vox reports that the increase in investor-owned single family homes has led to “extra fees, fewer or more delayed landlord services - with services becoming increasingly digitized or automated — and a marked increase in eviction filings.” 

Today, millions of people want to buy homes that do not exist

We need more homes for sale for families who want to buy them. To do so, homebuilders need more capital from more investors. We need to break away from the reliance on specialized financial institutions who have held the keys to our access to housing. 

Home Construction Collective is a groundbreaking, market-first fractionalized investment platform for new home construction. Collective enables investors to pool capital and directly finance the ground-up construction of new homes, earning equity returns when those homes sell. Collective is broadening investor access to this asset class so that we can build more homes for sale. By doing so, we strive to address the housing crisis, reinvigorate the importance of home ownership, facilitate wealth accumulation for families, all while providing investors with strong returns.

Collective lowers the barriers to entry for investment in these assets, long the domain of “specialty” institutions that have failed to bring needed capital to housing construction. It gives communities the power to build the homes they need. With anticipated returns of 13-18% in a ~12 month time frame, Collective offers compelling investment opportunities for digital asset and traditional investors alike. 

Developing new avenues to finance new home construction  is an urgent and important mission, especially as regional banks — which do most new construction lending— face challenges that have them pulling back their own construction lending programs. Our team has a deep bench of experience in new home construction (contributing to ~10k units per year), and we’ve seen firsthand over the last 12+ years the worsening supply/demand imbalance when it comes to housing in this country.

By investing with collective, you make your worth more worthwhile

Background

The Collective team set out in early 2021 with the support of an honor roll of venture institutions who believe in our mission: lowering the barriers to entry into new home construction finance in order to catalyze more needed building of new homes.

We built Rigor, a DeFi protocol for new home construction finance — open, low cost financial infrastructure — that enforces trust and capital transparency in payments to the construction supply chain. Capital is accountable and traceable so more investors can be comfortable putting their money to work in this industry. 

As of May 2023, we’re building, or have completed the build of, sixteen homes (six have completed and sold!) managed on Rigor’s payments infrastructure. In May we unveiled Collective, a simple app that enables accredited and non-U.S. investors to gain direct equity exposure to ground-up residential construction projects in profoundly supply/demand imbalanced markets.

On Collective, Project Sponsorslist home construction projects, co-invest on the same terms as all other investors, manage construction sell projects and deliver returns to investors. If you’d like to learn more, reach out to us at support@homeconstructioncollective.com.

If you’d like to invest today, visit homeconstructioncollective.com/invest to choose your investment!