MilikiRumah, an Indonesian property technology startup, has launched a $50 million private equity fund to scale its rent-to-own housing model. The fund is called MilikiRumah Indonesia Rent-to-Own Offtake Fund 1.
The four-year closed-end vehicle targets an internal rate of return (IRR) of 20%. Initially, the company will deploy the capital in Greater Jakarta, including Bogor, Tangerang, Bekasi, and Depok.
The initiative marks an important step for the startup. It reflects MilikiRumah’s shift from an early-stage proptech company to a platform focused on solving housing finance challenges in Indonesia.
Indonesia continues to face a large housing affordability challenge. Estimates suggest the country has a housing backlog of around 15 million units.
However, the issue is not only supply. Many developers already hold large land banks and unsold housing units.
Instead, access to financing remains the main barrier for many buyers.
Millions of Indonesians work in the informal sector or gig economy. As a result, they often lack fixed salaries or formal credit histories. Because of this, banks frequently reject their mortgage applications.
MilikiRumah is attempting to address this gap through its rent-to-own (RTO) housing model.
The company positions itself as a platform that connects developers, financial institutions, and homebuyers. In addition, its technology focuses on data-driven underwriting to evaluate buyers who are typically excluded from traditional credit systems.
In an interview with AsiaTechDaily, founder Xin Yuan discussed the structural challenges in Indonesia’s housing finance ecosystem.
Homeownership is still relatively low in parts of Indonesia. For example, ownership rates in Jakarta are around 50%.
According to Xin Yuan:
“Homeownership is still low in Indonesia (around 50% in Jakarta) and there is a 15 million housing backlog. This backlog is not caused by supply as developers have huge amounts of land bank and ready stock units available. This backlog is caused by the access to financing for consumers to purchase.
Access to housing finance is low as there exists many inefficiencies in the current operating systems in the housing finance ecosystem, hence MilikiRumah exists to become the infrastructure platform that bridges these inefficiencies for stakeholders to enable more homeownership and financial inclusion.”
MilikiRumah says the new fund will help scale its technology platform and housing partnerships.
Xin Yuan explained the goal behind raising institutional capital:
“We have proven that our technology model is successful in enabling the real estate and financial ecosystem for more homeownership access, we are now inviting more investors and partners to join us in our mission to empower more homeownership opportunities and financial inclusion in Southeast Asia – and empower your capital with real social impact”
Indonesia’s financial system still focuses heavily on workers with fixed monthly income.
According to the founder, this excludes a large portion of the workforce.
“The current operating systems of financial institutions are almost exclusive to the working population that are permanent employees with fixed income.
60% of Indonesia’s working population are non-fixed income, for example, solopreneurs, freelancers, people who have their own food stalls, people who have their own e-commerce online shop etc.”
In many cases, banks simply lack reliable data to evaluate these borrowers.
“Data transparency is still low as financial institutions do not have the expertise and infrastructure sophisticated enough to collect, process, and analyze data to derive insights from the informal working sector. Hence the financial institutions do not have enough reliable data points to confidently underwrite financing for them.”
Another challenge is the perception that informal workers earn less than salaried employees.
Xin Yuan believes this assumption is often incorrect.
“The biggest and most common misconception is that informal income earners make little and are less affluent than formal income earners. In fact, what we found from our experience is that the informal income earners are earning more than formal income earners, if not at least within the same range.”
The company observed similar trends during field research.
“For example, in one of our project visits and consumer study, we interviewed consumers who work in factories with fixed income and consumers who work as freelance social media streamers with non-fixed income. The consumers who work in factories have a monthly income range around IDR 5-10 million while the consumers who work as freelance streamers have a monthly income range around the same range with some earning as high as IDR 100 million per month.”
MilikiRumah operates across real estate development, fintech, and asset management. This structure introduces several operational challenges.
However, Xin Yuan says consumer behavior remains the biggest risk.
“In my view, what is most challenging is shaping consumer behaviour and awareness. While there is a natural primary-driven demand for home and shelter, the process of becoming eligible for it requires good habits and discipline. Yet the other side of consumer nature is consumerism which tempts consumers into short term gratification which could delay their eligibility for bigger purchases such as housing.”
Some investors view rent-to-own customers as high risk. MilikiRumah argues that technology and data can improve credit evaluation.
“These consumers are viewed as “high risk” by banks as the current operating systems of banks do not have the means to derive data points on this profile of consumers to have reliable underwriting. Therefore our tech systems and models are built to collect, process and analyze data to come up with reliable profiling of these consumers. We are able to see the repayment capacity of each consumer in much more detail.”
The company also monitors payment behavior throughout the program.
“Secondly, we have constant active monitoring of each consumer payment behaviour and milestones throughout the Rent-to-Own (RTO) program and this will update the repayment capacity of each consumer and flag out any probability of defaults early for us to take preventive measures.”
MilikiRumah also structures the model to reduce financial exposure.
“Furthermore, the way we structure the business model is meant to be free of consumer default risks. We are holding full ownership of freehold real estate assets and we have established processes for events of consumer defaults for us to replace with a new consumer to minimize lag in income from payments. These assets increase in value of 5-10% year-on-year historically, hence we do not lose asset value if the consumer defaults.”
Rent-to-own housing has faced criticism in some markets. Critics argue that it may lock consumers into long payment cycles.
MilikiRumah says its model focuses on eventual mortgage eligibility.
“As it is our mission to empower homeownership and enable more underbanked consumers into the bankable consumers, our RTO model is engineered to graduate the consumers into regular bank mortgage within a fixed period of time.”
Greater Jakarta offers several favorable market conditions for the company.
“A large proportion of the demand from first-home buyers is in houses priced below IDR 1 billion, and these houses are concentrated in Greater Jakarta (Bekasi, Bogor, Tangerang etc.), typically nearby transport infrastructure and employment nodes.”
Mortgage rejection rates in the region are also relatively high.
“As we speak to our partnering developers, there is a high mortgage rejection rate at their projects in Greater Jakarta of average 50-60%, where 1 in 2 consumers are rejected mortgage which is very high.”
MilikiRumah also plans to expand beyond Indonesia.
“We already plan to expand our infrastructure and solutions to neighbouring countries like Malaysia, Thailand, Philippines where access to housing finance is also limited.”
Looking ahead, the company aims to create a broader financial infrastructure platform.
“MilikiRumah’s vision is to build and become the housing finance infrastructure platform for emerging markets where data transparency and analysis is not well established. We hope that we are able to use data to prove the ability and willingness of the deserving underbanked who were previously excluded because there has not been enough clarity and data on them.”
MilikiRumah sits at the intersection of proptech, fintech, and institutional capital.
By combining rent-to-own housing with data-driven credit evaluation, the company is attempting to address a structural issue in Indonesia’s housing market.
In many cases, homes already exist. However, many buyers still lack access to formal credit.
If the model works at scale, it could influence how lenders evaluate borrowers with non-traditional income. It could also shape housing finance systems across Southeast Asia.
$50M Fund Launch: MilikiRumah has introduced the MilikiRumah Indonesia Rent-to-Own Offtake Fund 1 to expand its housing model.
Housing Backlog: Indonesia faces an estimated 15 million housing shortage, largely linked to financing access.
Focus on Informal Workers: The platform targets freelancers, small business owners, and gig workers.
Data-Driven Underwriting: Technology helps assess repayment capacity without traditional credit records.
Developer Partnerships: The model connects developers, lenders, and homebuyers.
Greater Jakarta First: Bogor, Bekasi, Tangerang, and Depok are the initial focus markets.
Regional Expansion: The company plans expansion into Malaysia, Thailand, and the Philippines.
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