With a Little Help From My Friends

“Do I rent or buy?” For a long time, the answer was easy to understand:

Rent or live with family for a few years while you build up your savings. Then, when you’re established in your career, and you’re thinking about starting a family, you buy. Your home provides you wealth and security for the rest of your life.

For generations, this social contract formed the backbone of the American Dream. But this contract has expired.

Half of all Millennials live paycheck to paycheck. We have barely enough saved to cover an emergency, let alone the thousands of dollars needed for a down payment on a home. Even those who have done “everything right”- worked hard, graduated from university, and have a steady job — typically have over $30,000 in student debt.

Even if you did manage to save up the money for a down payment, taking out a 30-year mortgage often does not make sense. Owning a home the traditional way ties you to a property for decades. Many of us don’t know where we will be working in three years, let alone thirty.

Welcome to generation rent.

This is where Chord comes in. When it comes to renting or buying, we asked a simple question: Why do people have to choose?

We believe the choice between renting and buying is a false binary. Chord offers an innovative financial product that changes home ownership to better fit our needs. We prize flexibility but understand the importance of building wealth through a stable asset.

It’s simple: instead of paying for a home at once and financing that purchase with a large down payment and thousands of dollars of debt, you build your ownership over time with affordable monthly payments to Chord. Unlike rent, those monthly payments don’t disappear into a landlord’s pocket. Instead, through your payments, your home becomes your savings.

Since you don’t sign up for a mortgage, you can cash out that savings when you need to, and use your wealth to pay off bills, like student loans, or fund other ventures. You can also move when you want to, just like if you were renting. In return, Chord shares in the appreciation of the value of the home.

With Chord, you will never have to throw away your money on rent again, and you can become a homeowner without committing most of your savings to a down payment or signing up for a decades long mortgage. Chord is built around the idea that your home should be a launchpad from which you build your wealth and pursue your ambitions.

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Today’s song:

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