The landlord who helps you buy your own home

An intriguing new scheme offers a novel route to home ownership for private renters, explains

- Charlotte Duck

Halfway through the pandemic my landlord announced he was selling up,” says Richard Chapman, 47. “It was a bit of a bombshell moment.” The office ad ops manager was renting a three-bedroom semi-detached house in Leatherhead, Surrey, with his partner and three children. “I didn’t have the funds to buy the property, so I did some research online and came across HomeNow.”

HomeNow is a start-up that looks at helping tenants, or “residents” as they prefer to call them, get on the property ladder by buying a home and renting it to them at a fixed price for five years. If the property’s value goes up in this time, the “resident” gets a portion of the added value to use as a deposit towards the property.

“The idea is that residents feel like homeowners as they are earning equity and will hopefully eventually own the home themselves,” says Jonathan Potter, HomeNow’s co-founder. “But they will still receive the equity if they don’t decide to buy the property.” HomeNow currently has 17 properties in the scheme, with another five under offer. None of these is in London but there are several in the commuter belt of Kent, Surrey and Essex.