How Belong is Breaking the Perpetual Rental Cycle and Turning Residents into Homeowners

Right now, in America, yet another generation is finding itself resigned to a lifetime of renting their homes. This blog discusses how Belong is using innovation to change this paradigm, and transform renters into owners.

On one hand, when you look at Belong, you’ll find two distinct sets of people: landlords – or as we call them homeowners; and tenants (ugh) – or as we call them, residents.  

But as different as these groups seem on the surface, the interesting thing about the people on our platform is that, in actuality, there isn’t that much of a difference between them. They both love the house that, on an emotional level, they share, and they both care about the neighborhood and community that surrounds the house.

At Belong we see the dichotomy between homeowners and residents as artificial and outdated; in today’s world, people should be able to move fluidly from renting to owning. 

That’s why we’re working so hard to accelerate the ramp to ownership – to shorten the rental period and extend the ownership one.

That data shows that the American Dream of homeownership isn’t going anywhere. In fact, 89% of Millennials – and this was before the pandemic – want to own a home.

But it’s harder than ever to achieve that dream. Housing prices have increased over the last decade-plus, while supply has slowed to a trickle. What’s more, cash-rich, opportunistic investors have moved into the market, sucking up supply. That’s why economists predict that even with rising interest rates, housing prices will not fall significantly.

As our founders observed in a recent blog post announcing our Series C raise, “The last ten years saw a significant concentration in ownership of the housing supply. As a result, individual homeowners and renters now compete with prominent hedge funds to access homes to live in and build long-term wealth.”

So what’s the solution? To create new opportunities for renters to become owners – and for owners to enable that transfer.

Belong is proud to be helping to break the perpetual rental cycle by innovating the Karma Wallet. Here’s how it works. Every time a resident on our Belong platform pays their rent on time, a portion of that money is stashed away in the wallet, for residents to apply to a future home purchase. 

When the resident decides to buy the property, and has reached an agreement with the homeowner, Belong provides residents with a Home Purchase Specialist who will guide them through the process. 

Of course, it might be a while before residents reach the point of being ready to buy a home, which is why we allow them to apply their Karma to the rental process as well: once you’ve built up enough Karma they’re given priority access to rental properties on the platform. 

Think of it as a twist on the classic “Rent-to-Buy” concept: residents are effectively building up equity in homes they want to call their own, while homeowners have built-in, on-demand buyers they know and trust.

We believe this is what residents want, to have the flexibility to buy with a helpful Belong boost.  And we believe that our homeowners want to see the houses they hold so dear end up with someone who will have the same kind of relationship. 

But we also know that all homeowners are different. Some may want to work through Belong and sell their home, others may choose to sell the home directly, or with a broker of their choosing.

That’s cool with us. Unlike property managers who have strict lock-in contracts, we give our homeowners the ability to sell their homes in any way they choose.

It is ideas like these that will help shift homeownership back into the hands of people, instead of hedge funds — and that will help working Americans “break the perpetual renting cycle,” to borrow a phrase — plus some inspiration — from our founders.

We know that just about all of the homeowners on our platform aren’t professional investors.  Many have moved out of their home but aren’t ready to sell it. Others are what we call “accidental homeowners,” people who’ve unexpectedly inherited a property and aren’t exactly sure what they want to do with it

These homeowners can provide the on-ramp to a generation of renters who want to become owners themselves. Being able to participate in the evolution is something that makes us happy every day.

Want to learn more about what Belong is doing for homeowners? Click here. Or if you’re a potential resident and want to learn how we’re helping people like you, click here.