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Adena Hefets

Co-founder & Former CEO, Divvy Homes · 1 appearance on the record.

computed by AI from the episodes · how this works → · full disclaimer →

founderexecutiveinvestoroperator@AdenaHefets ↗LinkedIn ↗adenahefets.com ↗

She is the co-founder and former CEO of Divvy Homes, a proptech company offering an alternative rent-to-own path to homeownership. Prior to Divvy, she helped build Square Capital and worked as an investor at DFJ and TPG.

29statements → 21claims → 6claims resolved → 50%fully supported → 3.93/5average certainty → 2.07/5average debate potential →

3 supported 2 partly supported 1 contradicted 6 not checkable as stated how the 21 claims stand · each chip opens the sources

4 predictions · 17 assertions · 1 opinion · 4 insights · 3 disclosures · every statement was checked. The predictions and assertions are the 21 claims: statements the public record can support or contradict. 15 are resolved, and 6 name no date, number or outcome precise enough to check. Everything else (opinions, insights, what ifs, disclosures) can never be settled by the record, so it carries no assessment.

The record, in short

What the tape says about how Adena argues and how the claims held up. Everything they said, and everything said about them, is in the tabs below.

Their most notable supported claim

Prediction Held up
Hefets: Housing downturn will not be as extreme as 2008 crisis
“So I don't think that we're going to see something as extreme as the, that last housing crisis.”
Adena Hefets Feb 6, 2023 ▶ 19:50 Easing the Housing Crisis by Building Better Tools

Their most notable contradicted claim

Prediction Didn’t hold up
Hefets: US home prices will decline 10% to 15% by Q1 2023
“Our view at Divi is that we're gonna start to see heading into Q-one year-on-year declines in home prices across Economist. That is likely to be somewhere around 10 to 15% year-on-year home price declines.”
Adena Hefets Feb 6, 2023 ▶ 17:22 Easing the Housing Crisis by Building Better Tools

Expressed certainty vs assessment result

none yet certainty 1
none yet certainty 2
50% certainty 3
79% certainty 4
none yet certainty 5

weighted support: a fully supported claim counts one, a partly supported claim counts half. Each filled bar is clickable and opens exactly those claims; "none yet" means nothing said at that certainty level has resolved yet

How they sound: speaking style how? →

250 words/min while actually speaking · 26.1 um and uh per 1k words

No argument clarity score for Adena Hefets: no usable question→answer exchanges on raw tape (a fair score needs 8+). We do not score a sample that small. Roundtable and news formats yield far fewer direct exchanges than interviews.

Measured by listening to the audio itself: 3,224 words across 1 episode of raw-level tape, transcribed verbatim with every um and uh kept, each one attributed only where the alignment onto our timed stream is unambiguous. These are measurements of speaking style. We do not rank them: across this corpus, fluency and argument quality are nearly uncorrelated (ρ≈0.2), and smooth talking does not signal clear thinking. How it's measured →

Everything Adena Hefets said on the a16z Podcast that made the record, most notable first. Filter by type, assessment or year in the ledger →

Prediction Didn’t hold up
Hefets: US home prices will decline 10% to 15% by Q1 2023
“Our view at Divi is that we're gonna start to see heading into Q-one year-on-year declines in home prices across Economist. That is likely to be somewhere around 10 to 15% year-on-year home price declines.”
Adena Hefets Feb 6, 2023 ▶ 17:22 Easing the Housing Crisis by Building Better Tools
Prediction Held up
Hefets: Housing downturn will not be as extreme as 2008 crisis
“So I don't think that we're going to see something as extreme as the, that last housing crisis.”
Adena Hefets Feb 6, 2023 ▶ 19:50 Easing the Housing Crisis by Building Better Tools
Prediction Partly held up
Hefets: The housing downturn will wipe out gains from 2020 to 2022
“What I do think is that we are going to wipe out some of the gains that were made in the last two to three years.”
Adena Hefets Feb 6, 2023 ▶ 19:57 Easing the Housing Crisis by Building Better Tools
Disclosure
Divvy Homes CEO Adina Hefetz was rejected for mortgages by three banks
“I personally applied for a mortgage last week. I applied to three different banks, and I got rejected from all three banks. I was told that as a founder, my current income was too low to support a mortgage.”
Adena Hefets Feb 10, 2020 ▶ 8:43 A Novel Path to Homeownership
Assertion Partly supported
Hefets: 80% of Americans cannot afford a home at current mortgage rates
“Based off of our 7.15% average 30 year fixed rate mortgage and then based off of an average home price of 400,000 dollars, 400,000 dollars, which is the average home price in, in the U.S. Only 20%, 20% of Americans, based off the median income, ah, at differen…”
Adena Hefets Feb 6, 2023 ▶ 2:32 Easing the Housing Crisis by Building Better Tools
Disclosure
Hefets: Divvy capped annual home buyback appreciation at 6% during market spikes
“It didn't feel right to me, so instead of using exactly what that third party said, I set a cap, and I said, we're not gonna charge any more than six percent appreciation annually, and I don't know where to pull that number from, right?”
Adena Hefets Feb 6, 2023 ▶ 12:39 Easing the Housing Crisis by Building Better Tools
Insight
Hefets: Tech startups, not government, bear onus to initiate regulatory dialogue
“Is the onus on government to reach out to us and say, hey, let's have a conversation? And truthfully, I don't think that's the case. I think the onus is on us companies to make sure we are opening up that dialogue, that we're showing up for events like this, t…”
Adena Hefets Feb 6, 2023 ▶ 14:06 Easing the Housing Crisis by Building Better Tools
Disclosure
Hefets: Divvy and major institutional buyers have paused buying homes
“Yeah, I would say, right now, if you look at any institution, whether it's an iBuyer, a single family rental platform, Divi, then we're not buying homes right now.”
Adena Hefets Feb 6, 2023 ▶ 15:56 Easing the Housing Crisis by Building Better Tools
Assertion Supported
Hefets: Over 50% of US homes hold 50% or greater equity
“There is right now over 50% of homes have 50% or greater equity in the property.”
Adena Hefets Feb 6, 2023 ▶ 19:33 Easing the Housing Crisis by Building Better Tools
Prediction Not checkable as stated
Hefets: Post-COVID population migration to new cities will stick long term
“We've seen migration to new cities that I think is going to actually stick, right?”
Adena Hefets Feb 6, 2023 ▶ 19:40 Easing the Housing Crisis by Building Better Tools
Assertion Partly supported
Hefetz: Rising FICO requirements exclude 20% of U.S. consumers from mortgages
“We've gone from having a six 90 average FICO for mortgages up to about a seven 40 average FICO today. While this maybe doesn't seem like a tremendous jump, it actually cuts out about 20% of US consumers, so it had a pretty big impact.”
Adena Hefets Feb 10, 2020 ▶ 7:39 A Novel Path to Homeownership
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hefetz: Divvy Homes achieves higher rent yields than public REITs
“We get more rent per home on sort of a constant purchase price basis versus any of the public REITs.”
Adena Hefets Feb 10, 2020 ▶ 12:07 A Novel Path to Homeownership
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hefets: Mortgage underwriting criteria have not evolved since the 1940s
“The underwriting criteria and the way mortgages were structured were determined then and have yet to evolve since that point in time. So the underwriting criteria, the down payment requirements, most of how the industry functions is almost a hundred years old.”
Adena Hefets Feb 6, 2023 ▶ 3:28 Easing the Housing Crisis by Building Better Tools
Insight
Hefetz: Consumers prioritize utility and access over owning fixed assets
“There's a new guard for how consumers are thinking about large dollar fixed asset investments, which is they are solving for use, experience, and ultimately access.”
Adena Hefets Feb 10, 2020 ▶ 2:10 A Novel Path to Homeownership
Insight
Hefetz: Homeownership is a forced savings asset you can live inside
“From the customer's perspective, it's also really, really helpful for them. It's a forced savings mechanism in an appreciating asset. And by the way, you can live inside this asset. No one lives inside the S&P 500.”
Adena Hefets Feb 10, 2020 ▶ 4:20 A Novel Path to Homeownership
Assertion Partly supported
Hefetz: Mortgage underwriting rules remain fundamentally unchanged since the 1940s
“I found that those underwriting requirements are fundamentally the same requirements that we have today.”
Adena Hefets Feb 10, 2020 ▶ 8:38 A Novel Path to Homeownership
Opinion
Hefetz: Housing market forces binary choice between renting and mortgage
“We believe that the industry today is very binary. You either rent a home or you dive into the deep end and get a mortgage. There is no in between.”
Adena Hefets Feb 10, 2020 ▶ 10:00 A Novel Path to Homeownership
Insight
Hefetz: Treating renters like owners lowers vacancy, turnover, and maintenance costs
“When your renters think and act like homeowners, it means you have lower vacancy, lower turnover, and as a result, lower maintenance cost per home.”
Adena Hefets Feb 10, 2020 ▶ 12:14 A Novel Path to Homeownership
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hefets: Divvy Homes customers average $100,000 in household income
“Our customers on average make household income right around a 100,000 dollars.”
Adena Hefets Feb 6, 2023 ▶ 8:41 Easing the Housing Crisis by Building Better Tools
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hefets: 51% of Divvy Homes customers are non-salaried or gig workers
“51% Of our customers are non-salaried, meaning that they're not W-II. They'll be a 10 99 hourly so gig economy.”
Adena Hefets Feb 6, 2023 ▶ 8:55 Easing the Housing Crisis by Building Better Tools
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Hefets: Divvy Homes transactions are 80% female-led and over 50% minority
“Over 50% of our customers are underrepresented minorities, And with our transactions, ah, they're 80% female-led.”
Adena Hefets Feb 6, 2023 ▶ 9:20 Easing the Housing Crisis by Building Better Tools
Assertion Supported
Hefets: US real estate transaction volume has dropped 20% year-over-year
“Transaction volume is a down right now about 20% year on year.”
Adena Hefets Feb 6, 2023 ▶ 16:56 Easing the Housing Crisis by Building Better Tools
Assertion Supported
Hefetz: 1930s federal interventions boosted U.S. homeownership by 20 percentage points
“We saw about a jump in 20% of, in the rate of home ownership over time.”
Adena Hefets Feb 10, 2020 ▶ 4:06 A Novel Path to Homeownership
Assertion Supported
Hefetz: Millennial homeownership rate sits at around 37%
“So this chart is the rate of home ownership on a constant age basis, and what you can see is that millennials today have a home ownership rate of about 37%.”
Adena Hefets Feb 10, 2020 ▶ 5:29 A Novel Path to Homeownership

Show 5statements(5 left)

Appearances (1)

EpisodeDateSpeaking time
Easing the Housing Crisis by Building Better Tools Feb 6, 2023 15m

Played on the show (1)

Episodes where a recording of Adena Hefets was played rather than Adena taking part, or where the tape carries an address with nobody putting questions to them. Listed because the words are on the record, kept out of every score on this page because they were not said on this show. We read this off the tape: who was spoken to, who was asked something, who answered whom.

EpisodeDateOn tapeWhat it is
A Novel Path to Homeownership Feb 10, 2020 12m aired address
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