No doubt it’s been one hectic period for the housing market. Emboldened with excessive stimulus cash and nowhere to spend it, many buyers flooded the real estate realm in 2020. We’re still feeling the fallout nearly three years later. Rapidly increasing appraisal values have led to an influx of investors, iBuyers, and beyond. Especially in North Texas, this has led to low inventory and tight markets.
Unfortunately, these are especially arduous circumstances for many first-time, foreign, or financially nonconforming home buyers. Since credit is becoming ever more difficult to access, home buyers in the aforementioned categories are hardly able to compete.
However, emergent and innovative fintech solutions are coming on the market every day and some of them aim to put housing equity over investor interests.
Milo’s Mortgage Solutions
I’ve been a fan of the fintech innovators at Milo for some time now. Early last year, I spoke with their CEO Josip Rupena about how the organization was allowing buyers to leverage crypto toward mortgages.
As the iBuyer and investor classes crowd the market, together making up nearly 20 percent of purchases in 2022, I was curious how equity-driven organizations like Milo were aiding home buyers.
“We can close mortgages faster than most people on their own,” said Rupena. “This is especially important when competing with iBuyers as they can make purchases really fast with no financing contingencies.”
Milo’s digital platform provides quick mortgages or personal loans to unconventional borrowers. With products like crypto loans, refi mortgages, and purchase mortgages, the company offers options for those of whom traditional banks may reject or take advantage.
“This gives control back to the individuals,” says Josip. “In recent years, we’ve seen an influx of institutional investors and iBuyers who are able to pay cash and close rapidly. These investors make it incredibly hard to compete. This puts the consumer at a disadvantage and in a position where they have to waive contingencies, appraisals, or inspections.”
These are measures put in place to protect individual homebuyers. And those with unconventional credit histories or recent immigration statuses can easily be taken advantage of.
“We don’t believe the people are unqualified,” said Josip. “Is just the system and conventional underwriting don’t fit their needs. That’s where we want to build solutions for them and help them.”
Breaking The Cookie-Cutter Mortgage Model
As America becomes more diverse and conventional ideas around credit become more varied, it’s important to make homebuying work for everyone. After all, individual homeowners take pride in their residences. They turn neighborhoods into communities and create scenarios for building generational prosperity. While investors and iBuyers have their place, they shouldn’t necessarily have a huge advantage.
“We’re already competing in such a tight supply market,” said Josip. “So those iBuyers coming in are going have more and more of an edge. We want to create a scenario where our buyers can move just as fast.”
