The mortgage-sharing matchmaker solving millennial homeownership

Australian housing affordability has reached a point where many millennials simply cannot save a deposit fast enough to keep up with rising prices. Ayumi Uyeda built Proppie to offer a different path: co-purchasing with a matched partner, splitting the deposit and mortgage while both building equity in the property market.

In this episode, Ayumi joins Steve Grace to discuss what it takes to build a marketplace that requires trust at both ends, how Proppie handles the legal and financial complexity of co-ownership, and why the housing affordability crisis is as much an opportunity as it is a problem.

“The deposit gap isn’t a savings problem. It’s a structural problem. And structural problems need structural solutions.”

How Proppie works

Proppie matches people who want to buy property but can’t do it alone, either because of deposit size or borrowing capacity. Matched co-buyers split costs and ownership proportionally, giving both parties a path into the market faster than they could achieve individually. The platform handles matching, compatibility assessment, and connects buyers to the legal and financial support they need to structure the arrangement correctly.

The trust problem in co-ownership

The biggest barrier to co-purchasing isn’t financial. It’s trust. Proppie’s matching approach goes beyond financial compatibility to assess lifestyle, investment goals, and exit strategy alignment. The platform is designed to create co-purchase arrangements that will hold together over a long-term investment horizon, not just get two people over the line for settlement.

“People co-purchase with friends and family all the time without any structure. Most of them eventually run into problems. We’re building the structure that prevents those problems.”

The housing affordability tailwind

With Australian property prices rising faster than wages for a decade, Proppie’s addressable market grows every year. The platform sits at the intersection of property, fintech, and marketplace dynamics, each presenting its own set of regulatory and operational complexity that Ayumi walks through honestly.

Key takeaways

Episode chapters

Companies and resources mentioned

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