By Tara Siegel Bernard
“If only we had the down payment” may be one of the most frequent complaints among aspiring home buyers in cities across the country.
Yifan Zhang, a 29-year-old entrepreneur who often hears this lament among her friends, has come up with a service that tries to help.
When she bought a townhouse in Seattle with her husband last summer, she knew that the spare bedroom could generate extra income on Airbnb. But when she learned just how much they could collect each month — enough to cover the mortgage, and sometimes more — her entrepreneurial instincts kicked in: Why not front would-be home buyers money for a down payment, and then collect a share of their Airbnb rental income in return?
