‘Landed’ wants to help Bellevue teachers buy their first home

Real estate prices continually go up, but what happens if you are a teacher and you want to work in the city where you live? Most people can’t afford to do that on a teacher’s salary.

Alex Lofton, a Sammamish High School graduate and now the CEO of a company called Landed, has come up with a solution that involves augmenting the cost of a down payment, as long as teachers share a quarter of profits in a future sale.

“We help the teacher or staff member of the Bellevue School District trying to buy a home who are finding it difficult to save for a down payment,” said Lofton. “We help them cover that down payment so they get access to the standard mortgage and can buy the home they want to buy.”

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Median home prices on the Eastside are just shy of $1 million, leaving many local teachers on the outside looking in when it comes to affording a down payment on a house. Landed helps to offset this by offering teachers up to half of a 20 percent down payment.

Landed has already been helping teachers buy homes in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and is looking to expand the program to other schools in and around the Seattle area, reports The Seattle Times.

“The way that we partner is that you get the money up front to help with the down payment, and then in the future you share a part of the gain in the value of the home.”

Landed will cover part of the losses as well

When teachers sell in the future and the value of the home changes, then 20 percent of that change will be shared with the Landed fund in exchange for getting half of the down payment upfront.

“The cool thing is that it’s not like a bank where you’re going to have to pay back a certain amount that you borrowed at a certain interest rate no matter what,” Lofton said. “If the value of the home goes down, Landed will share in 25 percent of that loss.”

“So it’s a real partnership one way or the other,” he added.