Some Millennials are teaming up with friends and roommates to buy homes together.

Some Millennials are teaming up with friends and roommates to buy homes together. The National Association of Realtors found that in the early days of the pandemic 11% of homebuyers (from April to June 2020) purchased a home as an unmarried couple and 3% purchased as “other” (meaning as roommates)—up from 9% and 2% in 2019, respectively. Thanks to high housing prices and the desire for more space, more Millennials are forgoing rent while teaming up with roommates to get a foothold in the housing market. Andy Sirkin, a real-estate attorney specializing in co-ownership, has seen the trend of owning a home with friends/roommates grow, noting that there has been a surge in interest for tenancy-in-common and joint-tenancy agreements (a.k.a. an agreement that allows owners to pass along their ownership rights to their co-owners), and reports that he now receives two to three inquiries a week compared to the few requests he would receive in one year decades ago. YPulse’s Life Plans Rewritten trend research found that 38% of Millennials say owning a home has become more important to them because of the COVID crisis, and they’re less likely than previous generations to wait for marriage or other significant life milestones before achieving their goal of owning a home. (WSJ)