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Maymont Homes has acquired rent-to-own startup Divvy Homes, according to reporting from Fast Company. Maymont Homes is a division of Brookfield Properties and manages a portfolio of single-family rental homes.

Founded in 2017, San Francisco-based Divvy Homes bought a home of its customer’s choosing and rented it back to them while setting aside a portion of their monthly payments for a future downpayment. Customers had three years to buy the home outright at a predetermined price.

According to Fast Company, after raising more than $400 million in venture capital in its first four years, Divvy conducted three rounds of layoffs by late 2023. The company recently launched DivvyUp in March 2024, a subscription-based homeownership readiness program.

But as the company expanded to new cities, customer complaints accumulated. In October 2022, Fast Company reported that Divvy was failing to address residents’ requested repairs, charging higher rents than its landlord peers, and evicting renters in greater numbers than before. Even some customers who had successfully bought their homes from Divvy said they were dissatisfied with the process and its costs.

At the same time, the Federal Reserve was raising interest rates, dealing a blow to Divvy’s business model. Hefets, at one time, had suggested that Divvy’s model would insulate it from such macroeconomic swings. But by late 2023, Divvy had conducted three rounds of layoffs, putting it in league with other struggling proptech startups.

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