impact investors. They then use the money they raise to invest in housing developments with conventional developers. Within those developments, they retain a certain number of units. Those units are then made available to eligible modest-income home buyers. Trillium offers those eligible buyers a shared-equity mortgage that does not have to be repaid until the buyer either resells the house or becomes an investor and rents it out. Rather than earning monthly interest, Trillium then gets their initial mortgage contribution repaid, plus their proportionate share of the appreciation in value – and their impact investors get repaid a reasonable rate of return on their investment along the way. Joe stresses that Trillium’s ultimate share of the appreciation in value is proportionate: “There are some other share appreciation mortgage providers out there, but they take a much larger share in the upside of the home,” he explains. “We take our share proportionally. So if a Trillium mortgage is worth 25 per cent of the value of the home, we get 25 per cent of the share of the appreciation in value.” To be eligible for a Trillium mortgage, home buyers must have incomes below the local median income and the price of the home they are buying must be below the city’s median price. (“This is the starting point for your eligibility;” Joe says. “Then we look at your individual financial situation and ensure that a Trillium mortgage and the appropriate mortgage amount will set you up to be a successful homeowner.”) JUNE 2023
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