As we come to the end of a challenging year for Americans, we want to take a minute to reflect on what it’s meant for us as a company and for our customers.

At Divvy, we’ve embarked on a bold mission to provide access to homeownership to more Americans. Through that mission, we’re creating greater financial stability and a better future for our customers. The U.S. housing market has historically been challenging for consumers and first-time home buyers to navigate—it can be expensive, exclusive, and opaque to take the first steps toward building equity in a home. We knew first hand how complex this industry was when we decided to tackle these challenges and we knew there had to be a better way. That’s why we built Divvy. We work tirelessly to make homeownership more accessible.

This year, COVID-19 has upended both our world and that of our customers and forced us to reinvent many things about how we operate at Divvy. On the one hand, millions of people have lost jobs and are less economically secure than they were before the pandemic. But on the other hand, shelter in place orders have made our homes even more central to our lives—dining rooms now moonlight as home offices and the kitchen table does double duty as a desk for students learning remotely. The family home has been a refuge and a bright spot for many during these challenging times, and we are proud to be able to offer people the opportunity to make this part of their American dream come true. 

When COVID hit our first priority was to support our customers—we did that by extending rent relief, and canceling any fees for late payments. To put some specific numbers behind this:

• 100% of our customers were offered rent relief options, including flexible scheduling of payments, no late fees, temporarily suspending the savings portion of their monthly payment, and/or using a portion of their home savings account to pay rent.
• 28% of our customers benefited from waived late fees, which were offered to all customers but only needed by a portion.
• 100% of our customers were offered free credit counseling—paid fully by Divvy. This is a service we continue to provide and nearly a quarter of customers have already taken advantage of it. 
• We’ve helped our customers save $5,600 on average per home—money they can use to purchase their home outright. This compares to the median $800 in savings among American renters, according to a study by the Joint Center for Housing Studies of Harvard University. 

Additionally, we’ve continued to provide our customers with a safe home to live in, while navigating concerns around having contractors in homes during COVID:

• We spent $1,484 per home on maintenance in 2020 —for a total of $1.7M—to ensure our customers have a safe and highly functional home 
• More time at home meant more wear and tear and reliance on things working well; we received 3,471 inbound maintenance requests and resolved urgent maintenance requests—e.g. heating and cooling issues or plumbing leaks—within an average of 48 hours

We’re proud of our adaptability in challenging circumstances and have worked tirelessly to help our customers have a safe place to call home. As a result, we’ve made sure our customers have a safe place to call home throughout the pandemic. 

To our current customers and partners—thank you for joining us on this journey. We’re so proud to work with and support you. And we invite everyone to join us on our mission—to make homeownership accessible to everyone.