Homeownership is traditionally considered a quintessential rite of passage, but for many Millennials and Gen Zers, the goal of buying a home feels out of reach.
According to Bankrate’s 2025 study, 22% of prospective millennials gave up on buying a home between 2020 and 2025 because they couldn’t find a property to buy. This percentage was highest among all generations, with Gen X at 17% and Gen Z and baby boomers at 12%.
Other major obstacles to homeownership include high mortgage rates and low supply.
Amanda Pendleton, Zillow’s housing trends expert, said potential homebuyers are facing two major hurdles: saving enough for a down payment and changing mortgage rates, so they need to get creative.
An increasing number of young homebuyers are looking for an unconventional way to achieve the American dream: buying together with friends.
“Group purchasing didn’t exist 10 years ago. This is a response to the affordability crisis we’re facing,” Pendleton told CNBC Make It.
Some experts say group buying has become a viable option for homeownership, but that’s not true for everyone. According to Zillow, the majority of homebuyers are still choosing the traditional route, with 52% purchasing a property jointly with a spouse/partner and 8% jointly purchasing with a relative.
In 2023, 14% of buyers made a joint purchase with a friend. However, according to the real estate market, that number will drop to 5% by 2025.
Pendleton said part of the reason group purchase rates have declined over the past few years is that rent prices have remained stable while mortgage rates are nearly double what they were during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“The barriers to entry to homeownership are that much higher. You need to live in your home much longer to make a cost-effective purchase,” she says.
“The idea of buying with a friend probably sounds great for a few years, but if you think you’ll have to live in the house now for eight to 10 years, it might make you feel a little less inclined to buy.”
Millennials represent the largest generation to share a home with non-relatives, according to data.
In the notoriously expensive housing markets of New York City and Washington, D.C., two sets of friends found a solution in buying together. And on the other side of the country, in Portland, Oregon, two couples thought it was the most achievable path to homeownership.
Here’s a look inside their unique arrangement and why sharing your life and mortgage is said to work.
A single mother building a village in Washington DC
Lascoe and Melvin purchased the five-bedroom, four-bathroom home earlier this year.
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Aisha Lascoe, 40, and Jasmine Melvin, 39, have been friends for more than 15 years. In early 2025, they found themselves divorced and looking for a new place to live. Both women work as journalists in the Washington, D.C., area, and Lascoe is the host of NPR’s Sunday Weekend Edition and the weekend host of Up First. We then decided to look into buying a home together in Washington, DC.
“We weren’t first-time homebuyers,” Lascoe said.
“For us, the bigger thing was to have a village,” Melvin added.
They bought a five-bedroom, four-bathroom home for $905,000. They made a 15% down payment of $133,015 and split the cost 60/40. Lascoe and Melvin sign a 30-year mortgage and pay just over $6,000 a month in installments, similar to how they would split a down payment.
Two friends split their monthly mortgage payments 60/40.
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To protect themselves, the friends entered into a joint tenancy agreement. This means each of you owns 100% of the home.
“If something were to happen to either of us, the other person would have sole ownership of the house,” Melvin says. “We had to make that decision early on.”
“This is nontraditional, but when you fall in love and marry someone you’ve been dating for maybe three or four years, you’re taking a much greater risk,” Lascaux added.
By buying a home together, the women create a village and see themselves as platonic co-parents, Lascaux said.
“We are raising our children together. We are partners in that and we are taking care of all five children. We are in this together,” Lascaux added.
Friends investing in themselves in New York City
When friends and colleagues Gilbert Nyantaki and Kwame Nkrumah, both 28, realized they couldn’t afford to buy a house in New York City on their own, they decided their best strategy was to sign a deal together.
Nyantakyi and Nkrumah live together in one of the apartments in the three-bedroom house and rent the other two.
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Nyantakyi and Nkrumah both work in finance and technology in New York City. The two, who have been friends for 18 years, consider themselves brothers and have always shared an interest in real estate, but they just didn’t know the best way to get into the market.
When they started looking for a home, they wanted to buy a property with multiple units so they could live in one and rent out the others. They said they initially started considering buying outside the Big Apple because they didn’t want to leave New York City but believed they couldn’t afford anything else.
They toured properties in the tri-state area, including Newark, New Jersey, Union City, and Jersey City.
“Interestingly, these markets were actually starting to appreciate in value as well, so we thought it made the most sense to move back to our hometown,” Nyantakyi says. “Why would we buy at such a high price elsewhere when we can buy at a similar price in our hometown?”
In 2023, after months of difficult procedures, the couple purchased a three-family home in the Bronx for $730,000. As a first-time buyer, Nyantaki qualified for a Federal Housing Administration loan, and her friends were able to put down a minimum down payment of 3.5%, or $25,550.
The two friends are using the rental income from their other apartments to help pay off their mortgage.
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The friends live in a three-bedroom, one-bathroom apartment in the house. Their monthly mortgage is about $5,300, which they will pay using a portion of the rental income from their other two apartments and split the remainder evenly, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It.
“From the beginning, we knew that this investment would give us the greatest return after we both left. If something happens in life, like Kwame gets married, I get married, and for some reason we have to leave,” Nyantakyi says. “I think that’s where the real investment begins.”
“One thing about Gilbert and I is that we do everything together. We go to church together, we play golf together. It was much easier to be not only business partners but also roommates,” Nkrumah said.
A group of four builds community in Portland, Oregon
Jenday Brooks Flemister, 29, and her partner had been looking for a place to buy in the Portland area for some time, but they always ran into problems, either the house was too far from where they wanted to live or it required too much construction that they didn’t want to take on.
“The housing market wasn’t in our favor. It didn’t feel like it was possible,” Brooks-Flemister said.
Brooks Flemister and his partner’s friends (also a couple) had moved to the city at the time and were considering buying as well. According to Brooks Flemister, the couple started thinking, “Rather than looking separately, why not consider multifamily housing together?”
After several months of searching, they found a duplex with four bedrooms, two bathrooms, and a garden in the perfect neighborhood.
“It felt like a magical moment,” Brooks Flemister said. “And it would have been cheaper than buying two houses separately.”
The couple purchased the home in 2024 for $735,000. Each of the four owns 25% of the property. The group pays a monthly mortgage of $5,700, or $2,850 per household, according to documents seen by CNBC Make It.
Brooks Flemister said the joint purchase was the best decision they made and they have no regrets about it.
“I wish I had thought about it sooner,” Brooks Flemister said. “The community alone is the biggest part of it and will continue to grow. I’m excited to see how big our village becomes.”
If you are making a joint purchase, it is best to get everything in writing
Just like with a significant other, joint purchases with friends can be complicated.
Andy Sirkin, an attorney at SirkinLaw APC, says there can be a lot of unknowns, so it’s better to lay the groundwork before closing a deal.
Both Pendleton and Sirkin advise getting everything in writing before making a joint purchase with anyone, even close friends.
“I often tell people that they should think of this agreement as a type of insurance,” Sorkin says. “There are a lot of people who don’t agree. What’s wrong with that? Well, they’re just taking more risks.”
Examples of agreements that co-buyers can enter into include TIC (Tenancy in Common) agreements. This allows multiple parties to own the property, but if one dies, ownership passes to that property rather than to the other co-owners. A TIC allows each co-owner to choose who inherits ownership upon death.
There are also joint tenancy agreements that require each joint owner to transfer their interest to the other joint owners upon their death.
“If there is a conflict and no agreement is reached, the cost in terms of the impact on their lives will be much worse than if they were a stranger, because we are talking about a very long-standing and important relationship between the parties that could be damaged, disrupted or completely ruined,” Sarkin says. “This is far greater than the economic impact that a lack of agreement could have.”
Mr. Lascoe and Mr. Melvin have a joint tenancy agreement and are working to obtain other protections in writing, he said.
“The reason we involve lawyers is purely to make sure someone is aware of the agreement,” Brooks-Flemister said.
Pendleton said group buying is a trend that will continue and will continue to be a way for people to achieve the American dream of homeownership.
“Buying a home is like buying a small piece of the earth, and there’s only so much that can circulate on earth. Over time, home values tend to rise, and homeownership gives you an opportunity to start building equity and tap into that wealth-building potential. Many people want a piece of that, even if they’re not in the perfect living situation for that to happen,” Pendleton says.
“As long as the barrier to entry to homeownership remains high, I think you’re going to see people coming up with new and creative ways to make it work.”
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