Bianca Bien-Aime and her husband Cameron Ashley with their children, Madden and Adelaide at their home they purchased with co-ownership platform Ourboro.EDUARDO LIMA/The Globe and Mail
Bianca Bien-Aime sees Ourboro as the commercial equivalent of the bank of mom and dad.
Until recently, the 30-year-old brand designer and her husband, 34-year-old IT professional Cameron Ashley, had been renting a small home in Toronto’s East York neighbourhood for $3,400 per month plus utilities. With two young children, they realized they needed more space, but couldn’t afford the higher rent that went with larger places, and all they could afford to buy were condos.
Enter Ourboro: a co-ownership platform that is structured much like a private equity investment firm. Earlier this year, Ms. Bien-Aime was able to buy a three-bed, two-bath detached home on a half-acre corner lot in Scarborough for $860,000, with Ourboro contributing half of the 20-per-cent down payment.
“I view Ourboro as a parent,” Ms. Bien-Aime said in an interview. “It gets us in the market.”
Parental down payment contributions are usually gifts. Ourboro, by contrast, demands compensation in the form of a big chunk of future profits whenever the home is sold.
“What we are doing is leveling the playing field for those who do not have access to the bank of mom and dad for purchasing their first home,” Alex Kjorven, Ourboro’s chief product officer, said in an interview. “We provide no falsehoods around the economic trade-offs. If you are able to own on your own, that is the better choice.”
Since its first deal closed in 2021, the Toronto-based company has managed to attract tens of millions of dollars in funding from several high-profile investors. Its business model is buoyed by consistent demand from aspiring Canadian homebuyers and research that suggests going from renting to owning sooner has an immediate positive impact on how people view their financial prospects.
The Conestoga Social Innovation Lab, which partners researchers at Kitchener, Ont.-based Conestoga College with organizations looking to solve societal problems, is conducting a multi-year study comparing Ourboro clients’ overall quality of life to that of renters.
Results of its initial survey – published in September, 2024 – found owners had a much more positive financial outlook than renters. More than 80 per cent of Ourboro clients surveyed said they expected their economic situation would improve in the coming year, compared to between 44 and 52 per cent of renters. Where renters fell within that range depended on whether they were actively looking to buy a home, planning to start looking soon, or had no specific homebuying plans.
“I was surprised to see such a difference so quickly,” Anthony Piscitelli, director of the Conestoga Social Innovation Lab who is leading the study, said in an interview. “I was anticipating that over time there would be some impact, but I hadn’t anticipated going in that the simple act of moving from a rental to an owned home would lead to such a significant difference between the groups.”
The price of that quick outlook upgrade is pretty steep. In exchange for contributing between 25 and 75 per cent of a down payment, up to a maximum of $250,000, Ourboro receives an equivalent percentage of the profit from whenever the home is sold.
For example, if Ourboro contributes $100,000 toward the purchase of a $1-million home, or half the $200,000 down payment, the company would receive half of the future profits from a sale. That means if the home is eventually sold for $2-million, leaving $1-million in total profit, Ourboro would be entitled to $500,000 in addition to getting back its original $100,000 investment.
Giving up such a large amount of future upside was “a little bit of a concern” for Jose Fabricio Carvalho de Melo, a 39-year-old chemist who also used Ourboro to buy a home for his family of four earlier this year.
“The hardest part to getting a house is getting the down payment,” he said in an interview. “If we didn’t have Ourboro we could only buy a small apartment.”
Mr. Fabricio was able to find a four-bed, two-and-a-half bath townhome in Oshawa for $590,000, with Ourboro contributing $59,000 or half the total down payment, and officially took possession in January. The family has no plans to move, but Ourboro’s agreement also allows homeowners to buy out their share any time within 30 years of buying the property based on the market value of the home at that time, meaning selling is not an absolute necessity.
Ourboro also offers its clients perks such as free maintenance services and credit toward their future share of profits for any value-increasing improvements they make to their homes, such as kitchen or bathroom renovations.
What Ourboro is attempting to prove is that the private sector can succeed where the public sector has previously tried and failed. In 2024, Ottawa discontinued its $1.25-billion First-Time Home Buyer Incentive program, which offered shared equity mortgages directly from the federal government.
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That program had many similar features to Ourboro, though it was widely criticized for the strict limits it placed on household income and purchase prices that left many prospective homebuyers unable to qualify. Anyone with a household income above $120,000 (that limit rose to $150,000 for the pricey Toronto, Vancouver and Victoria markets) was deemed too wealthy for federal assistance.
Ourboro, by contrast, has no specific income restrictions beyond a requirement for buyers to have the financial standing necessary to qualify for and support a mortgage covering 80 per cent of the total purchase price.
“The Ourboro model is designed with a specific group of people in mind,” Mr. Piscitelli said. “It has to be someone who doesn’t have access to that wealth elsewhere and the other piece is it has to be a starter home. I don’t think the model works if it is a home that you are going to live in for the longer-term.”
Ourboro has already established an early track record suggesting ample demand for its service. Nearly 250 homes worth roughly a combined $200-million have been purchased across the Greater Toronto Area with help from Ourboro since the spring of 2021.
That was the year Miles Nadal put $25-million into Ourboro. A well-known philanthropist and entrepreneur, Mr. Nadal founded advertising conglomerate MDC Partners in the 1980s. He ran that company for three decades before resigning in 2015, though he remains active in finance as founder and executive chair of private equity firm Peerage Capital.
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In an interview, Mr. Nadal said he has since managed to convince several other major investors – including Canada Mortgage and Housing Corp. and Bank of Nova Scotia – to back Ourboro on the promise of double-digit returns.
“It needed someone who was willing to put their shoulder into it and raise the equity and also to put up their own money,” Mr. Nadal said. “I think it is the right balance between what is commercial and what is an incredibly worthy cause.”
Jaime McKenna, president of Fengate Real Estate, which is part of Fengate Asset Management and has also invested in Ourboro, said there are other private entities willing to help with down payments, but those “usually want to do second or third mortgages and a more aggressive debt structure.”
“Then they can become a creditor and get a guaranteed interest payment,” she said in an interview.
“What is interesting and different about Ourboro is they have structured it as actually owning a piece of the home,” she said. “Miles really, truly in his heart, wants to see people own their homes and coming at it from a debt position didn’t sit well with him.”
Ms. Bien-Aime says she views Ourboro as a parent that helped her family get into the housing market.EDUARDO LIMA/The Globe and Mail
Mr. Nadal has ambitious growth plans for Ourboro, with his latest fundraising target set at $500-million. In May, the company won the right to administer a $50-million shared equity housing fund being launched by BOF Capital, which was itself launched at the same time by the non-profit Black Opportunity Fund.
“It is my hope that there will be 50,000 or 100,000 Canadians who will buy their first home through co-ownership,” Mr. Nadal said. “To me, it is the only fair and equitable solution that works for both the co-owner as the occupant and the investor.”
“If you have the bank of mom and dad, then, well, you don’t need Ourboro,” he said. “But if you don’t, then this can be a solution.”
