For generations, buying a home has been marketed as a rite of passage; a financial anchor, a marker of stability, the first real foothold in adult life. But for the young and ambitious Gen Z, that milestone is drifting from expectation to myth. Sky-high rents, daunting deposits, and a market seemingly engineered to repel first-time buyers have turned the dream of ownership into something approaching folklore.
Nowhere is the squeeze more acute than in London. Government data consistently places the capital at the bottom of the affordability rankings, with London homes still costing more than eleven times the average salary. Even the slight cooling from 12.9 in 2021 to 11.1 in 2024 has done little to bring reality in line with what younger buyers can reasonably afford.
Yet the aspiration endures. Gen Z remains resolute in its desire to buy, with more than a third seeing homeownership as the most dependable route to long-term financial security.
In a market defined by scarcity and entrenched barriers, Lenuity presents a compelling alternative: a model that bypasses supply bottlenecks by turning existing rental stock into a direct path toward ownership. Founder Paul Watts argues that solving the housing crisis is less about endlessly building more, and more about rethinking how we use what we already have. As a black founder from an underrepresented background, Watts is especially driven to open doors for communities with historically low ownership rates. We spoke with him to explore Lenuity’s plans to reshape Gen Z’s path to homeownership.
How Lenuity’s Let-to-Sell Model Reopens the Door for First-Time Buyers
Lenuity begins with a straightforward premise: the path to homeownership is not broken beyond repair; it simply needs to be reimagined. Rather than relying on slow, capital-intensive new builds for its core Let-to-Sell model, the company focuses on the vast pool of existing rental homes owned by landlords. Lenuity’s future captive lending initiatives will extend similar innovative financing to new-build developments.
This pool is expanding as landlords exit the market at unprecedented levels. Between April and June 2025, over 6,700 private rented households sought council support after landlords decided to sell. Budget measures have intensified this trend by making the sector less attractive.
As these properties come up for sale, Lenuity redirects them from the churn of the rental market into genuine ownership opportunities for first-time buyers by removing two major barriers: the need for a large upfront deposit and the rigidity of traditional mortgage structures.
In this model, landlords keep their capital invested while gradually exiting, buyers build equity from month one, and Lenuity acts as the regulated third party that structures and safeguards the relationship.
This mechanism reflects a larger mission. As Watts puts it, “my mission is to create economic empowerment by improving access to finance, assisting families to create financial security and build generational wealth through homeownership, especially for people from communities with historically low levels of homeownership.” Lenuity is not simply a new product; it is an attempt to rewrite the way people enter the housing market.
For Watts, Lenuity is the practical answer to a system that has failed too many people for too long.
Why Watts Believed the System Was Broken
With a career that bridged both development and finance, Watts has a vantage point few others shared. He watched developers “throw the dice with finance,” launching projects that often relied on luck rather than financial understanding. At the same time, buyers were left to navigate mortgage products that no longer matched modern incomes, while existing homeowners were dealing with a market that was becoming harder to navigate and increasingly unpredictable.
Watts describes finance as his “sweet spot”, which gave him a sharper view of a system he describes as “terrible for everybody… but doesn’t need to be.”
That understanding remained in place for years, but it was only when market pressures intensified that the need for a new model became impossible to ignore.
The Turning Point: When Two Problems Connected
That frustration finally crystallised in 2023 when a major house-builder deal collapsed. It forced Watts to look more closely at the broader system. New-build projects were crawling forward, landlords were tightening their books under rising costs and new rules, and political promises to build more homes seemed increasingly detached from reality. Once he placed the pressures next to each other, Watts saw the divide clearly: landlords drifting out of the market and buyers locked outside it. Lenuity became the mechanism to close that gap.
The Hidden Supply and How Lenuity Unlocks It
Watts believes up to 600,000 rented homes could be converted into first-time-buyer stock, opening a door that traditional development has failed to unlock. Figures show affordable housing starts in London collapsing from more than 25,000 in 2022–23 to just 2,358 the following year.
Even flagship schemes show the scale of the issue. In London, “affordable housing” is defined as homes let or sold at no more than 80% of market rates. This includes social rent, London Affordable Rent, and intermediate options like shared ownership for low- to middle-income households. Battersea Power Station, one of London’s largest and most high-profile developments, originally promised 636 affordable homes but later cut that to 386. This represents just 9% of the approximately 4,000 homes on site, a reduction Wandsworth Council described as “unacceptably low.”
Too often, new-build schemes look impressive on paper yet deliver homes that are too expensive, too slow, or too few to help the average first-time buyer. They are often located far from central areas with long commutes or inflated by the new build premium. Existing private rental properties, however, are already in desirable neighbourhoods where people want to live and work.
By converting these properties, Lenuity creates a realistic and immediate source of supply for first-time buyers, making the model a more accessible and cost-effective path to ownership.
How the Let-to-Sell Model Works
Lenuity’s model brings together two groups who currently have no efficient way to meet. Landlords facing rising costs, regulatory pressure and capital gains liabilities want to exit without withdrawing their capital from property. Through its Let-to-Sell model, Lenuity allows them to retain their investment while transferring part of the home to a first-time buyer.
For buyers, the obstacle is clear: most cannot save the full deposit that traditional mortgages demand.
The model works because Lenuity sits between both parties as a regulated third party. It defines the terms, manages the arrangement and ensures protections on each side. Mortgage brokers equipped with chartered surveyor-level information about properties, guide buyers on affordability, while educational partners ensure both parties understand their commitments. The result is a transparent, low-friction pathway into ownership.
The Future of Let-to-Sell: Captive Lending and Streamlined Homeownership
What differentiates Lenuity is scale. While some organisations buy stock themselves and resell it cheaply, Watts argues these models stall because they rely on owning the assets. Lenuity does not. “They are trying to offer a minicab service,” he says, “and we are building Uber.”
The long-term plan centres on captive lending. Lenuity will partner directly with house-builders, provide a mortgage illustration tailored to each specific unit and buyer profile, and compress the journey from application to keys into just fourteen days. By integrating finance, insurance, conveyancing and documentation into a single digital workflow, the company aims to create a streamlined home-buying experience that feels more like a modern consumer product than a traditional property transaction.
In pursuing this vision, Watts joins a growing cohort of black founders reshaping finance, technology and property in the UK. Entrepreneurs such as Dexter Simms and Terry Igharoro, previously profiled by Disruption Banking, form part of the same wave expanding access, equity and opportunity across the sector.
Author: Grace Sharp
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