The hottest new job perk is helping employees buy a house

With competition in the pricey San Francisco accommodation market reaching new heights, Hilary Petee and her hubby had stated up on the aspiration of homeownership.

"We swept it off as item that we couldn't do," Petee, 42, told Business Insider. "We thought, 'We can't oversee to do that correct now. It doesn't create sense.'"

But whenever Petee and her husband's rent risen by 8.8% in August, they began to earnestly regard buying, if they could create it work.

Petee, a brand manager, discovered that her director offered Nestment, a phase that provides homeownership coaching, as an employee benefit, and she decided to try it. She and her hubby have since closed on a $1.4 myriad home. Petee stated she wouldn't have been capable to do it without her homebuying coach.

"It didn't awareness akin my hubby and I were going to be capable to vie in the rivalrous accommodation market in San Francisco," she said. "I was beautiful enthusiastic that I would have any assistance at all to be capable to assistance discover a residence and to comprehend that in San Francisco, specifically."

Employee benefits, akin employer-covered healthcare, withdrawal plans, and student debt debt relief, are a tried-and-true way to enlist and keep gifted employees.

As it becomes increasingly difficult to own a home in the current market, several employers are offering accommodation benefits as a new way to win prospective employees' hearts.

The American aspiration is getting a small assistance from HR

Companies akin Nestment are heeding the call from employers.

"Our goal at Nestment is to bring homeownership to all who desire it," Nestment originator Niles Lichtenstein told Business Insider. "We cognize that homeownership is part of the American dream. It's part of financial health and additionally bodily and mental stability."

Lichtenstein founded Nestment in 2021 as a startup focused on educating first-time homebuyers, offering them services akin a individual homebuying trainer and AI tools that assistance them scheme out the finest way to buy a home. When customers began asking for integration into their companies, Lichtenstein obliged, launching the assistance as an director advantage in first 2026.

"We had a bunch of customers say, 'Can we bring this into our workplace?' We additionally had a brace of instances anywhere we had organizations who said, 'Hey, we see that you're doing this learning education. Can we dispatch this out to our employees?' Lichtenstein said. "We were like, 'there's item here.'"

Larry Salazar and his wife, Cheri, came to a akin decision in 2025 whenever they launched NestSteps, an employer-sponsored advantage program that helps workforce decrease the financial emphasis of purchasing a home.

Salazar stated his own cognition attempting to interrupt into the Southern California accommodation market in 2000 during working for Boeing made him acknowledge the power of homeownership. At the time, he was overwhelmed, and ultimately bought a residence formerly he moved to a additional affordable accommodation market instead.

"We moved for the intent of owning our home," Salazar told Business Insider. "That was probably, for me, a instant anywhere I started to acknowledge item is there that we need to leverage."

Employers about the nation are catching on.

Streaming business Twitch partnered alongside Denver-based business Multiply Mortgage to recommendation workforce home loan charge discounts.

Financial services business BNY announced before this twelvemonth that it was offering US workforce who create small than $100,000 $6,500 towards a downward payment — as fine as learning and home loan benefits.

Brooks Holtom, a prof of administration at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business, told Business Insider he could see benefits akin these catching on, particularly in places anywhere it's tougher to act the market, akin in San Francisco. He cited a 2008 program at Mercy Hospital in Miami, which offered $10,000 toward a downward fee to nurses who committed to five years at the hospital, as an example.

As additional companies commencement offering benefits akin these, Holtom said, others may regard it, too.

"It starts alongside one resolute in an industry offering a benefit, and whenever competitors see that it gets traction, helps them diagram or keep employees, afterward there's a copycat consequence — group volition prosecute that lead," he said. "In several industries, there are arms races, particularly whenever endowment is scarce. So you see the most excessive benefits anywhere endowment is value the most, and anywhere endowment makes the biggest difference."

Lichtenstein and Salazar the two see an contiguous need for their programs, which they the two anticipation volition one day rotate into norm benefits.

"You have your 401(k), I have my 401(k). Sure, we affection seeing that it's growing, but how frequently does it effect us correct now?" Lichtenstein said. "What impacts you correct now is a home."