New, Stephen Poloz-backed company aims to make home ownership more attainable
BNN Bloomberg
A new company backed by a former Bank of Canada governor wants to help Canadians co-own real estate through investments valued at just 2.5 per cent of a property's value.
A new company backed by a former Bank of Canada governor wants to help Canadians co-own real estate through investments valued at just 2.5 per cent of a property's value.
The goal of Key, a Toronto-based company that launched Tuesday with Stephen Poloz as its global advisory board chair, is to help people build home equity years sooner and without being locked into traditional mortgages that can be hard to obtain without savings.
"Young people, new Canadians, frontline workers, they're stuck renting for most of their adult lives and the dream of being able to afford to buy a home shifted away from people," said Key chief executive Rob Richards.
When Richards, a general partner at Plaza Ventures, and co-founder Daniel Dubois, an ex-manager at Airbnb, started thinking about creating the company in 2018, they found it took about 21 years for the typical first-time Canadian urban homebuyer to save up for the recommended 20 per cent down payment.
The average time is now more than 30 years because national home prices have skyrocketed to an average $716,585 last month and can stretch to more than $1 million in places like Toronto, real estate bodies have said.
Richards and Dubois think they can tackle these prices with a model that starts with Key identifying attractive properties and getting their owners and institutional investors on board.
