Sharing Your Home with Strangers: Common-Interest Ownership and Financing Options

Abstract

As the affordable housing crisis in the U.S. escalates, housing policy analysts and advocates are re-examining, modifying, and combining ways of decreasing the costs of homeownership through shared owner-ship and shared financing while also, in some instances, preserving long-term affordability. This Article will touch upon the vast array of models and take a deep dive into one of them, the relatively new shared equity financing model. That model holds some promise and a lot of peril for homeowners.

Keywords: common interest ownership, shared equity financing, affordable housing, homeownership, community land trusts, SROs, single room occupancy, co-living, cooperatives, condominiums