In this 164th episode of Fintech Impact, Jason Pereira, award-winning financial planner, university lecturer, writer, and host interviews Thomas Sponholtz, CEO of Unison, a company that enables equity financing of residential real estate and gives institutional investors access to the world’s largest asset class!
Episode Highlights:
- 0:33 – Thomas Sponholtz introduces Unison.
- 3:16 – What was the impedance for the creation of Unison?
- 6:06 – Thomas explains the consumer experience when working with Unison.
- 7:37 – To what degree is Unison participating in the change in the value of the house?
- 8:44 – What happens if the homeowner sells the property at a loss?
- 9:36 – How long do these deals take to get closed?
- 11:10 – Thomas discusses the return expectations by investors.
- 13:24 – How much attention is paid to regional diversification?
- 16:00 – Jason and Thomas discuss the potential risk for residential homeowners.
- 19:28 – Thomas discusses Unison’s goal of giving people the experience of having a home without the financial commitment of owning.
- 20:25 – What kind of feedback has Unison gotten back from its clients?
- 23:28 – If Thomas could change something about his company and his industry, what would he change?
- 26:09 – What has been the biggest challenge in getting Unison to where it is today?
- 27:24 – Thomas shares the motivations that get him up every morning.
3 Key Points
- Unison introduced equity financing to residential homeowners while also enabling institutional investors to get access to the world’s largest asset class.
- By bearing a high percentage of risk than the homeowner, Unison bears a disproportionate percentage of both gains and losses.
- Investing in a single home brings as much volatility as investing in the stock market while diversifying your portfolio with thousands of properties across the country can lower volatility from 15% to 5%.
Tweetable Quotes:
- “When you retire, your biggest expense is most likely to be housing but you could not invest in housing as an asset class as an institution.” – Thomas Sponholtz
- “Theoretically, this could be closed in a week, in practice because of that coordination between the homeowner and appraiser, it typically takes about 2 or 3 weeks.” – Thomas Sponholtz
- “To date, the only option for investment in residential real estate has largely been residential REITs, in which case you’re dealing with a renter environment, not an ownership environment.” – Jason Pereira
- “A single home has the same volatility as the stock market.” – Thomas Sponholtz
- “Communicating directly to the consumer is a lot easier sometimes than through an intermediary.” – Thomas Sponholtz
Resources Mentioned:
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