Is Co-Buying the Future of Homeownership?
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At five different points in my pre-married life, I lived in a multi-generational home. The first instance was in New York City’s Morningside Heights neighborhood. Two married friends from college were sharing one room with their two daughters and renting out their two extra rooms to young single women, myself included. I worked partly from home at the time, so I would sometimes babysit their young daughters while their mom caught up on sleep, laundry, or cooking. There were a fair share of communal meals, lots of conversations, and plenty of support as we adjusted to different life stages: me transitioning from college to work and the parents adjusting to life with two kids, the youngest of which had Down’s Syndrome.
When I moved to Asheville, North Carolina, an older couple I knew let me live with them rent free. It was a very different setup from my apartment in New York: calmer mornings and reflective conversations, old classic movies on Friday nights and solo morning runs around the neighborhood. In 2015, when I moved back to Brooklyn, a couple from church invited me to rent a room from them and their two school-age daughters (never a dull moment), and I spent my first summer in Waco, Texas, with a family of three from church; their youngest at the time I met four hours after she was born.
All of these experiences, sandwiched between episodes of living with “normal” roommates closer to my age and life stage, have cemented in me a genuine belief in the value of communal and intergenerational living. It’s valuable to be exposed to different life stages before you reach them yourself, whether that’s marriage, parenting, or empty-nesting. It’s wonderful to have people willing to share the load of life and meaningful to participate in the kind of organic home economies based on sharing and reciprocity: sharing meals, helping with chores, babysitting the kids, saving money on groceries… Those are the kinds of informal but extremely valuable perks abundant in these households.
These informal housing arrangements emerged organically for me because I simply couldn’t afford to live alone. But finding a room to rent, especially in New York City, wasn’t tricky. What was tricky was finding a household or community to be part of. It worked out for me in these instances thanks to my loose ties rooted in my college and church circles, but I know this is not always the case for young people: finding a living situation that offers both affordability and community is nearly impossible.
For a while, young professionals and students have gotten around this by renting apartments together: one person’s name goes on the lease and everyone else technically rents from them. But according to a recent survey produced by JW Surety Bonds, it seems more Americans, especially Gen-Zers, are willing to take this a step further and actually buy a house with someone other than a spouse.
The surveyors found that 15% of those surveyed had already co-bought a house with a non-romantic partner and 48% would consider it, with Gen Zers being the leading demographic of that group. According to CoBuy’s 2023 annual survey, co-buyers make up about 27% of all home purchases and 53 million people currently live in co-owned homes.
What’s clearly a drastic response to a constrained housing market—the U.S. housing market is currently 6.5 million houses short—might also be a response to the growing threat of loneliness and social isolation. With marriage and childbearing being increasingly deferred, young people are seeking not just affordable places to live, but meaningful communities they can be part of. Niles Lichtenstein, co-founder and CEO of Nestment, told Axios that money is just part of what’s sustaining the partnerships. “I think there's a real desire for connection and support,” he said.
This trend might seem like a shocking turn of events for a country that has long esteemed the suburban single family-home as the ultimate sign of success. But for younger generations, the accompanying regulations that stifle any other housing option from entering the market has become a significant barrier to leading financially stable and well-connected lives. So, they are doing what developers and bankers should be doing: adapting and taking on these co-purchasing arrangements that come with a formidable set of risks.
Time will tell how sustainable co-purchasing turns out to be. It also remains to be seen if developers and city leaders will recognize the urgent need for housing types that actually align with reality and that provide people with not just a chance to own a house, but with the chance to build a home.
Tiffany Owens Reed is the host of The Bottom-Up Revolution podcast. A graduate of The King's College and former journalist, she is a New Yorker at heart, currently living in Texas. In addition to writing for Strong Towns and freelancing as a project manager, she reads, writes, and curates content for Cities Decoded, an educational platform designed to help ordinary people understand cities. Explore free resources here and follow her on Instagram @citiesdecoded.