'Super Mortgage Mingle' aims to help individuals get a home. Here's how

From high interest rates to escalating housing prices, getting into a new home isn’t easy these days.

But a local firm has come up with an innovative way of offering co-mortgages — for two complete strangers.

“We are trying, in this crazy real estate market, to get people into homes,” said Joe Bondy, the broker for Dominion Lending Centre, which is launching an initiative called “Super Mortgage Mingle.”

He calls it an innovation of necessity.

The average home price in Windsor-Essex for September was $536,927, according to the Windsor-Essex Country Association of Realtors.

But whether you’re a first-time home buyer, divorcee or single person, Bondy said people coming for mortgage pre-approvals are quickly learning they’re being priced out of the real-estate market that just a few years ago they could easily enter.

“So why can't first-time homebuyers co-exist?” poses Bondy.

Joe Bondy of Dominion Lending Centre pitches his firm’s idea of a “Super Mortgage Mingle” in Windsor, Ont. on Wednesday, Oct. 18, 2023. (Rich Garton/CTV News Windsor)

The team has created a platform to help prospective but priced-out homebuyers get together to sign a co-mortgage to own the house together.

“You're seeing in Toronto or the bigger cities, two, three families buying houses together. You're seeing friends buy houses together in the bigger cities,” said Bondy. “Windsor has gotten to that point. We need to put this out there.”

Kind of like match.com for home buyers, Bondy plans on hosting mingle events to connect like-minded individuals who can ultimately pair up to increase buying power.

“Instead of renting and throwing away money, you end up buying a house, paying down your mortgage and gaining equity. So it's a forced savings account for you,” said Bondy.

Frazier Fathers is a freelance researcher who regularly looks at data in the local real estate market.

“You have to get creative,” he said of the many ideas being tossed around as solutions to the housing crisis.

He’s points to the city’s goal of building 13,000 homes over the next 10 years to add more supply and rein in affordability.

But according to data released by the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation, the month of September only saw 46 new housing starts across all of Essex County.

Windsor, which is trying to build a record number of homes each year to meet the aspirational goal, saw 424 housing starts so far in 2023.

“We're not on pace, regardless of whatever number you want to use. We’re not on pace,” said Fathers, who notes demand is there, but the low supply and mismatch between prices and incomes is keeping people at bay.

“It drives up prices, right? And so what that does is it puts upward pressure on the whole spectrum of housing,” said Fathers. “People who used to be able to buy into that starter home at $300,000. Well, now they're in an apartment still.”

He believes ideas like building more multi-dwelling units like fourplexes, additional dwelling units and co-mortgaging could stick.

Bondy says he’s received 10 calls from interested parties about the mortgage mingle in just a week.

“Windsor still affordable, vis-a-vis the rest of the country. But the people living in Windsor don't think it's affordable anymore,” Bondy said.

“So this is an idea that puts those people together and get somebody into that housing market.”