Jeff Dinter, Co-Founder and CEO of Gravy, joins Cheddar News' Closing Bell, where he says he hopes that his company is able to give renters confidence when buying their first house. Dinter also explains how renters can earn rewards that go toward their future homes.

Closing Bell

Gravy Helping Turn Renters Into Homebuyers, Raises $2.6 Million in Seed Funding

Okay, well, gravy is looking to convert renters into homeowners and it's raised 2.6 million in seed funding to further its goal, the ST louis based startup, its latest move coming at a time when homebuyers are staring at the prospect of much higher mortgage rates and are looking to successfully navigate a path towards saving money to buy their first home. So this would apply to renters. Well, joining me now is Jeff Minter co founder and ceo of gravy. Jeff thanks so much for coming on, Look, I think for millennials, the angel, the question is, will millennials be renters forever, and certainly this market at least now, not helping them. How do you come in? How are you trying to help renters one day become homeowners? Yeah, first thanks for having me happy to be here. So, Gravy is a home buying platform, purpose built for renters, so how do we think of that, helping every aspiring homeowners navigate the path to homeownership and ultimately give them confidence when they're buying their first house? That means confidence both in the process and that they're getting a great deal. So how we think about it is the aspiring dream of buying a home, it's going nowhere. Um, we've seen more and more challenges and hurdles that may prevent millennials are any aspiring homeowners to buy, but we want gravy to be that central point of your plan to buy a house, which means saving up the down payment, preparing to become mortgage ready and ultimately finance the house when the time comes. Okay, so certainly there are many steps along the way and I know that your platform works on a rewards model, kind of like a points basis or perhaps a loyalty basis. Ex explain how that works. Yes, so we're very excited to introduce gravy rewards and simply put as a renter, you can earn rewards towards your future house, um you can earn rewards towards your future house while you're saving up. So this means saving money consistently paying rent on time. Ultimately, on closing day, you can redeem those rewards with any of the lenders and agents in the first time Homebuyer gravy network. Now, do the rewards ever expire? How do you convince a perspective client and user Jeff that these rewards all of the money they put into this will be there when they finally want to buy a home. So the rewards do not, they don't expire. What we're really excited about is we pardon, with lenders and agents that ultimately want to reach motivated aspiring homeowners at the perfect time when they're ready to buy. So the rewards are going to be there when it comes time to buy. We still want you to price shop alone and find the perfect agent, but the rewards will be there. And for us, the goal is to reduce the amount of upfront money you need on closing day to get the keys. Look, it's certainly the american dream. One of the many challenges is finding a home to begin with, let alone of financing it, which I know you're trying to help users do Jeff along that journey, just raised 2.6 million in seed funding. How are we gonna use that towards your own goal? Yes, so as we're growing the business, we've just exited beta, so we're really excited to have the public launch and the 2.6 million, really grateful to have investors who believe in our mission of making homeownership more accessible to everyone. Um, there's 100 million renters in the United States, all of them are somewhere in their journey to homeownership and whether they want to buy a house for building wealth or just because they want a place to call home. Everyone's got their own journey and our investors believe in that mission to provide a resource throughout that process. So it's going to accelerate our hiring and overall getting gravy into the hands of as many renters as possible. Well, to that end, Jeff, what is your business model? How are you planning to make money on this as we generate revenue in a few different ways. The newest edition is called Gravy Plus and that's a subscription available to gravy members that ultimately gives them more tools to hopefully reach home buying, um, status sooner. So a few of those are tracking your mortgage, credit score, earning rewards quicker and also making it really easy for family and friends to send cash gifts straight into your house fund. So think a birthday or wedding, we want to make sure that any possible way for you to hit your down goal down payment goal sooner is available through gravy. Is there any getting around high mortgage rates simply put no. Um I think it's, it's one of the, if you look at the list of different challenges that that comes with buying your first home, even before you had this new complex layer of inflation and rates, it's always been hard of saving up that down payment, which is the most money most likely that you've ever had to save in your life, getting your credit score in a great spot and just knowing what, by focusing on the right thing. So those fundamental problems we believe will always be there and that's what we saw gravy as initially starting and filling that spot in the ecosystem of can we be the first or next step to buying a home and as different factors come into the market, we certainly want to be a resource for that as well. All right, Jeff into our co founder and ceo of gravy, Jeff, thank you so much