Zown Realty Inc. is helping renters buy a home by rewarding them with points that cover part of the transaction, serving as a separate pathway to home ownership from its main offering. 

The Toronto-based brokerage has launched an app where renters can upload their lease agreement and provide proof of their rent payment each month, then receive up to eight per cent of the rent in rewards that can be used toward buying a home on its platform.

“This gives us an opportunity to truly help someone build their path towards home ownership,” Rishard Rameez, founder and CEO of Zown, said in an interview with RENX Homes.

Zown developed the app because most people reaching out to the company were years from buying a home, with many still renting, Rameez said. To shorten the gap, it put a twist on its main service of giving a portion of the down payment back to homebuyers.

Even with home prices falling in some of Canada’s biggest markets, prices are still out of reach for many, Rameez observed. The Zown app is aimed at helping users save for a home purchase and develop the financial habits to build their finances toward a down payment, he added.

Zown's credits for renters

The goal with the app is to “build a path to ownership and reward getting there,” Rameez said, “rather than treating buyers as a single transaction.”

The equivalent value in Zown credits a user can accumulate is capped at $10,000, but the company is looking to raise it to approximately $15,000 over time. The rewards can be used for paying the down payment, closing costs and land transfer fees for a home purchase.

A renter can then continue to use Zown’s service for buying a home. Aspiring homebuyers can qualify for its artificial intelligence (AI)-powered service, which matches them to a property based on their preferences, links to a real estate agent, negotiates interest rates for mortgage payments and manages the closing process.

If a sale closes, Zown provides 1.5 to two per cent of the home's price back to the buyer for paying fees like the down payment.

Young adults in their early 20s, who are four to five years away from purchasing a home, are the main market for the app. The expectation is to help the demographic become financially independent by building good habits and educating them on the path to home ownership, Rameez said.

“No one else is doing this model,” he said. While many services today shower users with points for spending on their platforms, which can be spent on benefits like business-class plane seats, those incentivize more spending. Zown, by contrast, can build wealth, Rameez added.

The app is available in Canada and the U.S. It attracted 500 users in under 24 hours after launching with no advertising, Rameez said, with over 2,000 people on its waitlist.

Zown's technology

The rewards program builds on Zown’s main service, which has helped more than 1,000 homebuyers complete over $500 million in real estate transactions since 2022.

Zown has scaled “significantly” over the last 24 months, Rameez said. Since the company’s start as a technology-based transaction platform for housing, Zown has added a digital twin feature to its app. A new home buyer can generate an inspection report for their property that includes a virtual representation of the home. This, Rameez said, acts as an AI concierge which informs the homeowner about what can be improved, such as replacing the filters in the air conditioning.

“Our goal is not just to help someone buy a home, but also be there after you buy a home to help you maintain the home that you bought,” Rameez said about Zown’s services.