Creative financing real estate: the new norm?

Co-ownership

Co-operatives and co-ownership are excellent ways to reduce your outlay on investment properties and holiday homes by teaming up with like-minded investors. They also boost your initial capital, helping you secure better deals.

Entering into a co-ownership arrangement will be a different experience depending on the type of property you’re buying. As always, it pays to examine contracts carefully before signing on the dotted line.

Crowdfunding

Crowdfunding could easily be argued to be the epitome of creative financing real estate. You build your funding page and formulate the entire pitch yourself from scratch, taking sole responsibility for drumming up interest and ensuring it translates into hard cash.

Aside from major mainstream sites like Kickstarter, dedicated property sites like Feather the Nest and The House Crowd help you pitch for and collect funds for property. 

Peer-to-peer lending

Peer-to-peer lending sites differ from crowdfunding because they identify the investors, rather than offering you a platform to do so yourself. Often this is achieved by pooling the investments of numerous small-scale savers. 

Here too, lenders have now diversified to cater for specific clients. Landbay, for example, offers mortgages specifically for landlords. Researching the right specialist could be the real art here, as they’ll be geared up for your exact requirements.

Mortgage management

Among the newer creative home financing trends, certain mortgages favoured in the 70s and 80s are enjoying a resurgence. In particular, the two-step and constant amortisation mortgages.

Two-step mortgages tend to operate over 40 years, starting at a fixed rate and switching to an adjustable rate after five to ten years. They usually have lower monthly payments. Constant amortisation mortgages, meanwhile, reduce the principal faster with large, early payments. Both are useful ways to manage your repayment schedule.

Multiple property loans

In the US particularly, financing or refinancing multiple properties into a single commercial loan has become more popular. Now many providers allow buyers to access loans for up to four residential properties.

Commercial loans like this are available worldwide, and creative financing real estate in this way simplifies your overall investment and can help finance purchases that, alone, might be particularly expensive or risky.

Grants and trusts

If you’re tracking the latest property insights, you’re in a good position to spot areas where there’s political or social impetus to support investment. In the UK, for example, the government and conservation charities offer financial incentives to buyers investing in dilapidated historic buildings.

Similar opportunities are available globally, particularly as part of regeneration projects. These can be excellent opportunities for investors to acquire both business and personal properties that would otherwise stretch them beyond budget.

Wherever you’re investing, the key is to identify which of these creative home financing ideas best suits your needs. With so many fresh ideas for buyers, you don’t want to miss out on the perfect partner for your investment.