Adena Hefets, CEO of Divvy Homes, explains why national housing undersupply and owner equity prevent a 2008-style housing crash.
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.”
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.”
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.”
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…”
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?”
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…”