The Tinder for home buying
This is another story about homeownership against the odds.
Well, almost. That is because Wellington friends Nigel Guy, Jess MacDonald, and Fiona Clark haven’t yet bought a house. But they plan to.
They are eschewing the norm – a young couple buying onto the bottom rung of the property ladder in some far-flung suburb – and instead pooling their resources to buy a shared house in a relatively central suburb.
If the establishment of a startup aimed at helping people coown houses is anything to go by, they are part of a growing movement.
At a central Wellington cafe (where they, shock-horror, can afford to drink coffee while trying to get into the property market) they explain the decision to buy together was not just about money.
Owning together meant they could live more sustainably and also get somewhere closer to central Wellington, MacDonald said.
While a (stereotypical) young couple may go into home-ownership with love in their hearts but little in the way of exit strategies, these three have already had the hard conversations and had legal documents drawn up.
They know what will happen if one of them dies, how they will handle it if one of them has a partner who wants to move in, and they have looked at each other’s finances.
The only downside, so far, was the fact that, because resources were pooled and they were looking at larger houses, they found themselves competing with the big-money of property investors, rather than first-home buyers.
The trio are doing it with the help of new start-up Miuwi (Me, you, we), which founder Brad Parsonson described as ‘‘like an online dating service’’ – albeit one for buying a house, rather than going on a date.
Initially, the match-making was being done manually but Parsonson planned to soon have it so people could set up an online profile and matchmake much like on dating app Tinder.
Guy, MacDonald, and Clark were already friends and had decided to buy together before finding Miuwi but were using the service for advice in finding a home, as well as getting legal and mortgage advice.
Owning together meant they could live more sustainably.