LANDED

Alex Lofton, Jonathan Asmis, and Jesse Vaughan kept hearing the same story around the Bay Area. Teachers, nurses, and firefighters were getting priced out of the cities they worked in.

Someone could earn a solid salary and still not have $150,000 sitting around for a down payment. So in 2015 the three of them started Landed.

The idea was simple. Landed would put up part of the down payment alongside the buyer.

The buyer gets into the house. Landed gets a share of how much the home rises or falls in value later.

In 2017 the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative handed them $5 million to test it on Bay Area teachers.

Landed does not lend money. It invests it.

When an essential worker is ready to buy, Landed chips in up to half the down payment, capped at $120,000. In exchange, Landed takes a cut of the home's future change in value.

If the house gains value, both sides win. If it drops, Landed shares the loss too.

The buyer still owns the home and lives in it. There is no monthly payment to Landed.

The bet only settles when you sell or buy Landed out, usually within 30 years.

The core product is the shared equity down payment program for essential professionals like teachers, nurses, and first responders. Landed wrapped financial coaching and homebuying guidance around it.

It also built tools that help institutions design and run their own down payment assistance programs.

Landed grew by going where the pain was loudest. School districts.

Hospital systems. Universities.

Instead of marketing to random homebuyers, it partnered with employers of teachers and healthcare workers and let word spread through staff rooms. By its own count, Landed helped essential professionals buy over $1 billion worth of homes.

It expanded city by city, starting in the Bay Area and reaching Hawaii, Denver, and Portland.

The model only works when money is cheap and houses keep climbing. In 2022 that broke.

Interest rates shot up. Investors lost their appetite for parking cash in homes for 20 or 30 years.

The math behind shared-equity down payments got a lot harder. So Landed pivoted.

Instead of running the programs itself with private money, it started helping city and state governments run their own versions. A smart fix.

But it meant stepping back from the original dream of being the big private player in the space.

Landed's early money came from the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and the DRK Foundation, which fit its mission-driven angle. The 2019 Series A was led by Initialized Capital.

OMERS Ventures led a later extension. The wider backer list runs through Y Combinator, banking executives, and Stanford economists.