Retirement, medical, homeownership? A new workplace benefit for buyers
- - Retirement, medical, homeownership? A new workplace benefit for buyers
Andrea Riquier, USA TODAYFebruary 15, 2026 at 4:01 AM
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Brian Morales and his partner always knew they’d be homeowners someday. But it seemed far on the horizon, until they got some unexpected help.
The company where Morales works as an engineer announced a new employee benefit offering assistance with both the financing and the planning needed to buy a home. Morales jumped at the chance, and now he and his family are the proud owners of a triplex, living in one unit and renting the other two for income that offsets the cost of the mortgage.
“It's kind of hard to turn down a benefit like this,” Morales told USA TODAY. “I don’t think I would have been able to do this on my own. I wanted to have a home for my family to be okay and to be setting them up for a better financial future.”
The benefit Morales used comes from a company called Oro, which was founded by George Fatheree and a partner, Kiesha Mayes. Fatheree spent many years as a "Big Law" real estate attorney, but had an epiphany when he took on what he calls a “passion” project helping a Black family whose oceanfront property had been seized by the city where it was located, over a century ago.
Thanks to Fatheree’s legal work, the land was returned to the family, the first time in American history a government had returned property to a Black family, he said.
Read next: The heir's property: One man's journey to reclaim family land in the American South
Fatheree called the experience “a front row seat to what happens when people and families and communities are denied the opportunity to own homes, to own property, to own land, to create intergenerational wealth.” That insight led him to co-found Oro in an effort to close the wealth gap by enabling homeownership access through a workplace benefit.
Housing can be a pain point for both employers and employees
The housing market's high costs and barriers to entry are a pain point for employers as well as workers. The daunting cost of living may make it hard to attract or retain staff. It may also mean that some workers are commuting extremely long distances, or spending copious amounts of time trying on their own to become homeowners, meaning they're less productive on the job.
“We hear the frustration from employers,” said Julie Doran Stewart, who manages fiduciary advisory services for Sentinel Group, a nationwide benefits consultancy. “This is just something that everybody is contending with and it eventually does impact the business side of things as well.”
Oro allows employers to offer anything from financial assistance, like down payment funds, help covering private mortgage insurance, or buying down interest rates - to counseling and preparedness for the process of becoming a homeowner. The benefits can be tailored to any particular company, and can be set up with whatever stipulations an employer wants to make sure an employee stays with the company after taking advantage of the Oro benefit.
One way to help democratize homeownership is by making the benefit open only to first-time buyers, who are more likely to be younger and less wealthy, Fatheree noted.
More: Young, single, Black, female: the new face of Baltimore's neighborhoods
He and industry experts who spoke with USA TODAY acknowledge that these types of offerings aren’t new. Employers have long offered housing assistance, particularly to higher-status workers or those who are being enticed to relocate to expensive areas.
What Oro does differently is make homeownership a standard part of the financial package that workers are now accustomed to receiving from employers: retirement planning, health and transportation savings, insurance, and so on.
“I am a big fan of any kind of nudge, whether it's a Wellness platform or working with an adviser or doing it yourself, of anything that encourages people to get more in touch with their goals and what they're saving for,” said AJ Ayers, an equity compensation specialist and co-founder of financial planning company Brooklyn Fi.
“The idea of a platform that is provided by your employer that helps you save money, (and) helps you establish credit, I see as a win," Ayers said.
Homeownership as employee benefit
There are good reasons to have a third party like Oro offer a housing benefit, Stewart said. “The plumbing is a little bit complicated and from a privacy perspective, you're now getting into people's debt and other things that maybe the HR team doesn't think should enter into the purview of the organization to be responsible for.”
Kelli Send, senior vice president of financial wellness services at consultancy Francis LLC, also applauded Oro's approach.
"They’re capturing what is one of the major frustrations for young adults today,” Send said. “They're trying to pay off their student loans, they're trying to live. There's not enough money to do that and save for a house.”
But Send also noted that some employers choose to offer similar assistance through financial planner benefits, which might take a more holistic view of the employee’s overall financial life. She also wonders if there will be enough support for employees who might see the benefit of what Oro offers but feel uncertain about getting started.
The company is still young and Fatheree told USA TODAY that it is learning as it goes. The decision to offer homeownership counseling services, for example, was spurred after a program that offered down payment assistance had no takers.
Fatheree was mystified until discussions with that company's workforce revealed most had no idea how to even get started buying a home: They would have been the first in their families to attempt such a thing and didn't understand credit, down payments, or other parts of the process.
"To me, employer-sponsored housing support is an equalizer and helps level the playing field," Fatheree said. "But it also makes sense because it's aligning the interest of the employee and the employer."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: New employee benefit aims to help workers become homeowners
Source: “AOL Money”
