Meet the friends who buy houses together

Wwhen COVID-19 The pandemic hit, Eve Ettinger realized something needed to change. Stuck working remotely on a rented farm in rural Virginia, they felt isolated and longed for community and support.

“I wanted to have a housing situation that was more focused on long-term stability and sustainability,” says Ettinger, 35, who uses they/them pronouns.

A friend of Ettinger’s had recently gotten divorced and was thinking about starting over, and the two started thinking about buying a house together. “We wanted to get rid of the compulsive heteronormative idea that you build your family and your stability on romantic relationships,” says Ettinger. “We wanted to create an intentional community living situation where we could help each other in a larger way.”

They purchased a home in Northern Virginia in 2021, which they now share with some friends. The move allowed Ettinger, a writer who also works at a nonprofit, to build financial stability that had long seemed out of reach.

A generation ago, most Americans would never have considered buying a home with a friend. But that’s changing, as many millennials and members of Gen Z We no longer view the traditional markers of stability – marriage, children and a white picket fence – as an inevitable or even desirable goal. A record number of young adults marry later or never marry, and a growing number are choosing not have children. Broader economic factors, such as high inflationthe rising cost of living and stagnant wages are making saving even more to buy a home challenger. More than 12 million Americans spend at least half of their salary on rent, and Housing prices in 99% of US counties are unaffordable for the average wage, according to data from real estate data provider ATOM.

Breaking into the real estate market on a single income can be difficult, which is why couples still compose the highest percentage of homebuyers in the US. But many increasingly believe that the benefits of home ownership – the number one driver of wealth in the United States – should not be limited to those in romantic relationships. This is why more people are choosing to buy a home with close friends.

The data supports the idea that buying a house with friends is becoming a genuine trend in the real estate market. A recent survey of JW Guarantees found that about 15% of Americans have lived in a household with someone who is not a romantic partner. Open House Austin, a real estate company focused on helping homebuyers move away from traditional ideas of ownership, says the number of co-buyers they serve has jumped from 5% in 2021 to 16% in 2023.

Alex Reyna always wanted to be a homeowner, but the process seemed impossible without a partner — especially living in Austin, a city where housing prices have soared. shot after technology companies migrated to the region during the pandemic. “I told my mom, ‘It’s so hard not to have dual income,’” says Reyna, 35. “If I had someone to pay half my mortgage, it would be a totally different story.”

When a friend started thinking about moving from Washington to Austin, DC, she approached Reyna with the idea of ​​pooling their resources and shopping together. They managed to buy a house in May. Neither woman sees the house as her “forever home”, but rather as a way for both of them to build their own financial stability. “I spent much of my life living paycheck to paycheck,” says Reyna, who runs her own business managing short-term rentals. “It not only puts us in a home, but it also builds something for our future and I think that was huge for both of us.”

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While the trend of buying houses with friends is becoming more popular, it’s not a new concept in the queer community. “It’s something people have been doing for a long time because it was necessary,” says AnnieRose Shapiro, a real estate agent in Portland, Oregon. “Queer [people] who had a long-term romantic partner would not be able to buy a house as a couple.”

Now the practice is spreading to others out of financial necessity.

“The housing market right now is, by historical measures, unaffordable,” says Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at Redfin. Buyers face prohibitively high prices and higher mortgage rates than they have in decades. The percentage of homes on the market affordable to those earning the median income in the U.S. fell from 50% in 2013 to 16% in 2023, according to data from Redfin. Partnering to buy a home can lower costs by 40 to 60 percent per room, says Matt Holmes, co-founder of Co-purchasean app that provides resources to help individuals throughout the co-purchasing process.

Still, while it can help cover costs, there are unique challenges that come with buying a home with a friend rather than a spouse.

Heath Schechinger saw this for himself when he decided to co-buy a home with friends in Northern California in 2021. “We all had our own reservations about the nuclear family model of moving to the suburbs and feeling isolated and trying to create a family ourselves,” says Schechinger, 40, adding that Rent increases made them eager to buy. “We all wish we could own a home so we would have the autonomy to make our own choices, but living in the Bay Area, which seems so financially out of reach for all of us.”

But Schechinger and his friends quickly learned that the home-buying process wasn’t designed for multiple, unrelated buyers. “On all the forms we filled out, there were only two names we could include and we constantly had to write down one of the other people,” he says. “All the systems we have built to facilitate and enable home ownership [including] the financial, legal and tax structures are all geared towards a couple.”

Across the country, the housing inventory and laws reflect this. Although multigenerational and multifamily homes are common in many parts of the world, the majority of homes built in the U.S. are single-family homes, according to the Center for American Progress. Many cities in the US – including Stephenville, Texas and Providence, RI – prohibit three or more unrelated adults from living together. Some couples are even getting involved to make homeownership more affordable: a Co-Buy survey found that one in five groups that banded together to co-own a home included a couple in the group.

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Andy Sirkin, a lawyer who specializes in real estate co-ownership, says he encourages co-buyers to draft an operating agreement that outlines what the deal will look like from start to finish — including an exit strategy, property management and standard.

Before buying the house, Reyna and her friend created an agreement that covers possible exit scenarios — including whether one of them hopes to move in with a romantic partner or buy out the other’s share of the property. For Ettinger, who bought a home with a friend who earned more than them, the arrangement also included “sweat equity” — the responsibilities and contributions to a home that may not be defined monetarily. “What I would pay in rent goes into equity, which I can raise if I leave, and the rest I contribute through the work that is invested into making this place better and improving everyone’s standard of living,” says Ettinger.

Sometimes obstacles remain too big to overcome. Schechinger and his friends recently decided to sell their home, in part because their mortgage contract prohibited them from transferring the mortgage to a non-family member when someone expected to walk out of the deal.

Still, Schechinger is determined to try again. He describes his ideal home: a home with separate wings to allow for privacy, with shared spaces that foster connection. He sees it as an antidote to the loneliness epidemic, a world in which friends can share child-rearing responsibilities or household responsibilities. “In the past, there were clear structures where people could count on each other for support, whether it was caring for aging parents or helping with child-rearing, or even finding a partner,” says Schechinger, psychologist and co-founder of Modern Family Institute, a research-based organization focused on expanding legal and social definitions of family. “This network provided a sense of security and mutual assistance that no longer exists today.”

He believes that living situations that prioritize friendship and community will only continue to grow in popularity — especially as people seek to build their own safety net in the absence of broader social protections. “The social and economic pressures,” he says, “are too high for people not to consider this.”