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by mnrasul 2792 days ago
So, I've read some literature, and my understanding is that there are ways to structure it, just that they can be subtle and slightly difficult to understand.

Suppose you want to buy a house. The idea is that, you'll agree on a price of the house, which is greater than current market value. Suppose listing price is 100K. You agree on 150K with the lender. Each payment is expected to pay as part of 150K.

This however creates two problem. Lender's profitability depends on accurately determining the future price. Either lender or applicant can suffer from imprecise price.

An alternative I've seen is, the notion of rent. Suppose, at closing the lender buys the house for you, with the intention that you'll reside there and pay market rent.

Suppose the price of house is 100K, and rent is 1000/month. Now suppose, there's no down payment, you'll have to pay above 1000/month to start building equity.

After first payment of 1100, you have equity of 100$, while the lender has 99.9K. So, when the 2nd month payment goes, you can get to keep 0.1% of rent as equity OR use that to build more. Over time, you'll eventually pay it off. This part likens it to interest, except because rents are market based, they don't fly with borrowers.

So lenders have come up with "Administrative" fees, which I equally think are BS. Hence traditional mortgage still are more accessible.

I would love it if there was a rational product out there.

1 comments

That "rational product" you're looking for is a traditional loan with interest—which in the end is just a way of renting money. All these other arrangements are just attempts to mimic the utility and function of a loan while avoiding the term "interest" in order to technically comply with the bare letter of various religious restrictions. If you aren't bound by those rules then there is no point in taking on all that extra complexity.