My best friend and I have been talking about buying a two-family house and living in it together. We're both in our late 30s and have wanted to buy for a while, but everything is out of our range as solo buyers - so going for it together seems like the ideal (and only) way to get out of the rental market in New York City.
This shift is more than a workaround for mortgage rates. StreetEasy's report found that 56% of prospective buyers are planning to purchase with a co-buyer. Out of that number, 9% will team up with friends and 6% with relatives. That "third way" of co-ownership-neither solo nor coupled-is about to help reshape how homes are bought and how life is lived in NYC's tight market.
Today, Gen Z and millennials are increasingly turning to co-buying homes with friends or family—not for countercultural reasons, but as a practical response to high housing prices.