Assertion Not checkable as stated
Srini: ZeroDown is cheaper than renting after factoring in purchase credits
“If you actually look at the math at zero down, like, against rent even though the monthly payment is higher than rent, but at the end you get purchase credits that's worth, like, 15% of the home, and if you take that into account, It actually ends up being che…”
Insight
Srini: Mortgage buyers prefer lower rates and slower processes over slick UX
“Turns out, like, people didn't care that much about UX because it was a once-in-a-lifetime transaction. In fact, they wanted it to take longer. Yeah. And turns out, People get more about, like, a 50 basis points difference, rather than, like, hey, like, I have…”
Disclosure
Srini: ZeroDown customers earn 0.25% monthly home equity towards purchase
“So you get .25% of the home every month, And over a five-year period, you get 15% of the home. So it becomes easier to buy the home from us at any time you want after a two-year period.”
Disclosure
Srini: ZeroDown's underwriting model bets on customers' earnings in five years
“The biggest thing that we evaluate is, like, is their income, like, healthy? Right? And do they have some savings? Because, like, we help them build the rest of the savings to be able to buy the house from us five years from now. So, so we are basically making…”
Assertion Supported
Srini: ZeroDown qualifies buyers in minutes and delivers keys in seven days
“A pretty fast, like, three to five minute, like, qualification flow. You just connect your bank accounts using Plaid. Like, we look at an asset report. We look at your income. And we say, like, Craig, you can go and buy a 1.4 million dollar house. Like, and he…”
Assertion Supported
Srini: Zenefits bypassed US immigration by locating global engineers in Vancouver
“So one of the ways we grew really quickly at Zenefits in terms of hiring was we were able to tap talent all over the world. It was just easier to bring them To Vancouver in terms of immigration than like the US.”
Insight
Srini: Narrowing 10,000 homes to 20 is machines; 20 to 1 is human
“Machines can take your choice from 10,000 homes to 20 homes. Like, 20 to one is a human problem. 10,000 to 20 is a machine problem.”
Insight
Srini: Homeownership is defined by profit rights, customization, and price stability
“If you really think about home ownership, the fundamental rights are ability to profit from sale. Right? When you own something, you can profit from sale. Ability to customize it, reshape it, remodel it, make it your own. If I gave you an iPhone and said, like…”
Assertion Supported
Srini: Bay Area households making over $200,000 still cannot afford homes
“There are people in the Bay Area today making more than 200,000 dollars household income, but they can't even think about buying a house.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Srini: Roughly 75% of ZeroDown customers buy homes within three weeks
“Probably 75% of our customers so far have bought homes in two to three weeks. And they're in a home like in a month, month and a half. From the time they heard about zero down a month and a half, they're in a home, which is crazy.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Srini: ZeroDown facilitates about a dozen home purchases per month
“We are doing about a dozen homes a month right now.”
Disclosure
Srini: ZeroDown operates a tech company and a property holding fund
“Zero Down is actually two businesses. Like, so we have a tech company and a, what is called a prop core, a property company. So the property company is actually a fund that actually goes and buys houses and holds them, and the fund has a lot of infrastructure,…”
Disclosure
Srini: ZeroDown monetizes via a $10,000 upfront fee and commission splits
“In fact, like, we charge the customers a 10,000 dollar upfront fee. That's how we make money. We split commissions with the buy side broker, and that's how, like, those are the two big things we make money.”
Assertion Not checkable as stated
Srini: Bay Area home purchases require $300K to $400K in spare cash
“He had twins, and he wanted to buy a house only to find out that you need to have 304 100,000 dollars to spare, not, not all of your savings to spare, to be able to buy a house.”
Assertion Partly supported
Srini: A 4% mortgage pays off only ~8% principal in 5 years
“Even with a 20% down, a four percent interest mortgage, you would have paid off only close to eight percent of principal in five years.”
