There are rent to own schemes, although less flexible than what you are describing. The amount of money renters would have to spend to get a relevant portion of

There are rent to own schemes, although less flexible than what you are describing. The amount of money renters would have to spend to get a relevant portion of the equity would be substantial. Landlords aren't just going to start giving away capital for free. The current Price-to-Rent ratio in SF is 45.88. So lets say your willing to pay an extra 50% of your rent to gain equity you would end up gaining about 1.1% of the units equity per year at market rates. This is somewhat unfair because SF has one of the highest price/rent ratios but 50% increase in rent is also very large. With an average tenancy around 2 years most people are going to own extremely little equity while the property accrues all sorts of minority owners which would be nontrivial to manage. The only real benefit I can think of is it provides some insulation against cost of housing increases but at the downside of exposing you to housing price decreases and trading cash for an extremely illiquid asset. Who is going to want to buy 2% of a house/apartment?