Employers turn homebuying assistance into a recruiting tool

By Amara Osei

Financial services company BNY announced earlier this year that US employees earning less than $100,000 could receive $6,500 toward a down payment, plus education and mortgage benefits.

Streaming company Twitch partnered with Denver-based company Multiply Mortgage to offer employees mortgage rate discounts. Business Insider described employer-covered healthcare, retirement plans and student-loan debt relief as established recruiting and retention tools. Employers around the country are catching on to housing support, according to Business Insider, as competition in pricey San Francisco reaches new heights and buying a home becomes harder.

How did homebuying coaching change one family's decision?

Hilary Petee, 42, and her husband had given up on homeownership, Petee told Business Insider. After their rent increased 8.8% in August, they began considering a purchase, Business Insider reported.

Petee, a brand manager, told Business Insider that her employer offered Nestment, a homeownership-coaching platform, as an employee benefit. Petee said the couple have since closed on a $1.4 million home and that she could not have done it without her homebuying coach.

“We brushed it off as something that we couldn't do,” Petee told Business Insider. “We thought, 'We can't afford to do that right now. It doesn't make sense.'”

“It didn't feel like my husband and I were going to be able to compete in the competitive housing market in San Francisco,” Petee said. “I was pretty excited that I would have any support at all to be able to help find a home and to understand that in San Francisco, specifically.”

What does Nestment offer employees?

Niles Lichtenstein founded Nestment in 2021 to educate first-time homebuyers through a personal homebuying coach and AI tools that help them plan the best way to buy a home.

“Our mission at Nestment is to bring homeownership to all who want it,” Lichtenstein told Business Insider. “We know that homeownership is part of the American dream. It's part of financial wellness and also physical and mental stability.”

Customers began asking to bring Nestment into workplaces, Lichtenstein said. He launched the employer-benefit service in early 2026.

“We had a bunch of customers say, 'Can we bring this into our workplace?' We also had a couple of instances where we had organizations who said, 'Hey, we see that you're doing this learning education. Can we send this out to our employees?'” Lichtenstein said. “We were like, 'there's something here.'”

Why did Salazar build NestSteps?

Salazar told Business Insider that he and his wife, Cheri, launched NestSteps in 2025, an employer-sponsored program that helps employees reduce the financial stress of buying a home.

Salazar told Business Insider that his attempt to enter Southern California's housing market in 2000 while working for Boeing showed him the power of homeownership. He felt overwhelmed and ultimately bought a home after moving to a more affordable housing market.

“We moved for the purpose of owning our home,” Salazar told Business Insider. “That was probably, for me, a moment where I started to realize something is there that we need to leverage.”

Can the benefit become standard?

Brooks Holtom, a professor of management at Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business, told Business Insider he expects such benefits to spread, especially in markets where entry is difficult, such as San Francisco. Holtom cited a 2008 Mercy Hospital program in Miami that offered nurses $10,000 toward a down payment if they committed to five years at the hospital.

“It starts with one firm in an industry offering a benefit, and when competitors see that it gets traction, helps them attract or retain employees, then there's a copycat effect — people will follow that lead,” Holtom said.

Holtom added:

“In some industries, there are arms races, especially when talent is scarce. So you see the most extravagant benefits where talent is worth the most, and where talent makes the biggest difference.”

Lichtenstein and Salazar both see an immediate need for their programs and expect them to become standard employee-benefit cornerstones, alongside retirement savings, Business Insider reported.

“You have your 401(k), I have my 401(k). Sure, we love seeing that it's growing, but how often does it impact us right now?” Lichtenstein said. “What impacts you right now is a home.”

The coming test is whether early adopters can attract and retain enough workers to trigger Holtom's copycat effect. If they do, down-payment grants, coaching and mortgage discounts could spread into broader benefit packages.