Kodit.io acquires Europe’s first rent-to-own startup Lucas so millennials can fulfil their dream of owning a home
With rapidly rising real estate prices and strict lending criterias, Kodit.io is helping more people to access homeownership.
Helsinki, Finland (May 20th, 2021) One of Europe’s leading proptech and iBuyer companies Kodit.io has announced its acquisition of Lucas, a Spanish-based rent-to-own startup, taking the company’s headcount to over 100 people across offices in Finland, Spain, and Poland. As part of the acquisition, Lucas will take on the management and expansion of Kodit.io’s business in Spain.
Kodit.io will now offer a unique service that allows homebuyers to rent before actually buying a home. They strategically combine their automated home selling and buying experience with Lucas’ rent-to-own product, which allows first-time homebuyers to choose a property with only a 5% down payment. Kodit.io comes up with the remaining 95% to buy the flat and lease it back to them with an exclusive option to buy on a future date at a predetermined price.
Especially young home buyers are struggling to purchase their own homes. There are multiple reasons affecting them such as the rapid rise in real estate prices in the housing market and banks’ increasingly tightening lending criteria for first time home buyers, many of who have not accumulated enough savings, meaning they are left with few options on how to buy a property.
“Already 80% of the buyers on the Kodit.io platform are millenials and majority of them first-time home buyers. So adding a service that solves one of their major problems fits into our strategy perfectly,” says Kalle Salmi, CEO of Kodit.io.
“With the current lending criteria, younger generations need 10–20 years to save up enough money to buy a home in most of the large cities in Europe. They are chasing a moving target with continuously increasing real estate prices. With also increasing rents it's like a vicious cycle that prevents people from getting the long term financial benefit of being a homeowner”, continues Salmi.
Poor access to home ownership is a huge problem in Europe causing significant differences in the level of wealth and net worth between generations. With the acquisition, Kodit.io is now positioned to make first-time home buying more equitable. The Lucas product will be an addition to the product stack to make the process more efficient by onboarding users and enabling the financial transactions to be made digitally.
“Homeownership has proven to be the largest wealth generator to reach a massive scale in the last century. However, it is almost impossible currently for first time buyers to get into the housing ladder. Lucas’s core is to provide first time home buyers with an accessible and flexible solution into buying a home, driven by technology. Through our platform, we have been able to sign up over 15,000 future homebuyers in need of our service. It quickly became evident that Kalle and I shared a very similar mission and that we should just align into a single vision to create something that can lift many peoples’ future,” comments Steven Aitkenhead, CEO and founder of Lucas.
Kodit.io is a real estate platform that aims to give maximum flexibility and smooth experience to home buyers and sellers. Kodit.io gives home sellers instant cash offers, while providing home buyers renovated move-in ready homes. Kodit.io has recently launched a tech-driven real estate brokerage, as well as sale, leaseback and rent-to-own products.
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For additional information:
Media kit with pictures
Kalle Salmi, CEO, Kodit.io
+358 50 573 5229
kalle@kodit.io
About Kodit.io
Recognized as the Finnish Startup of the Year 2019 by NSA Awards and Europe’s Hottest Scaleup by TNW and Adyen, Kodit.io is building the world’s most accurate AI-powered real estate platform to make buying and selling homes fast, simple and safe for everyone.
If you are looking to sell, you can benefit from our instant cash offer or tech-driven real estate brokerage service. If you are looking to buy, we have a wide range of renovated city apartments for sale. You can also enjoy the comfort of a move-in ready home within our rental offer, with the flexibility to switch or buy the moment you’re ready.
With a team of over 100 professionals across the offices in Finland, Spain, and Poland, we are set to grow and become the number one on-demand, self-service platform for all city housing needs.
Find out more about us at: www.kodit.io.
About Lucas
Lucas (Urban Share SL) is a Spanish financial PropTech startup and first rent-to-own platform in Europe that provides first time homebuyers a path into homeownership in a simple, accessible, and flexible way.
Lucas provides a fractional ownership component that requires customers to only invest 5% of the property value. Lucas comes up with the remaining 95% to buy the flat and lease it back to them with an exclusive option to buy it in three to five years at a predetermined price.
The platform efficiently onboards users and carries the transactions in a digital fashion, guiding first time homebuyers on the financial requirements for becoming a homeowner, and connecting them with banks to remove friction in the mortgage process.
You can find out more on: www.Holalucas.com
