The distinction you draw is flawed. The difference between equity and debt financing for any investment - whether it's buying a car, a house, or starting a star

The distinction you draw is flawed. The difference between equity and debt financing for any investment - whether it's buying a car, a house, or starting a startup - is really a qualitative one, and neither good nor bad. Residential mortgages made houses affordable, but they also directly led to the historic inflation in housing prices that has happened over the last half-century. The vast quantities of capital that were unlocked into the residential mortgage market by mortgage-backed securities had exactly the same dualistic effect: they made it easier for middle- and low-income families to buy homes, and eventually inflated the market to dangerous degrees. Providing senior equity, or junior debt, to finance these transactions will do exactly the same thing. It will make it easier in the short term to buy a house. It will mean that you can finance your house purchase without locking yourself into excessively high monthly payments. And, if successful, it will eventually mean that so many more people can afford houses that the prices will rise in the future. This is just like how a judicious combination of venture capital and venture debt helps you finance your startup for a minimum of dilution, without excessively high monthly debt payments, but the availability of capital means that rent in SF is inflated. Yes, Point and its financiers will get rich on this, as did the first mortgage-backed securities dealers and the institutional investors that backed them. But so did the people who bought houses in the 90s with suddenly flush access to mortgage financing.