February isn’t just about chocolates and flowers anymore. For the growing number of couples and friends looking to buy property together, this month is becoming the unofficial kickoff for one of the most important conversations you’ll ever have: talking money before you buy.
If you’re thinking about co-buying a home with your partner or best friend, you’re not alone. And if you’ve been putting off “the money talk,” Valentine’s season might be the perfect excuse to finally have it.
Co-Buying Is More Common Than You Think
Here’s something that might surprise you: nearly 15% of Americans have already bought a home with someone other than a romantic partner, whether that’s a friend, sibling, or other family member, according to a JW Surety Bonds survey. Even more striking, over 60% of Americans say they would be willing to buy a home with a friend.
For unmarried romantic partners specifically, the numbers tell a powerful story. Census data analysis shows that around 555,000 unmarried couples bought homes in a recent year, a 46% jump from about 381,000 a decade earlier. That means unmarried couples now represent roughly 6 to 11% of all homebuyers, depending on the dataset.
This isn’t a fringe trend. A 2025 report on co-ownership estimated that roughly 29% of home purchases involve some form of co-buying, with about 58 million co-owners across the U.S. You’re not doing something weird or risky by considering this path. You’re joining millions of people who have realized that pooling resources is a smart way to get keys in hand.
Why People Are Choosing Keys Before Wedding Bands
The reasons are straightforward: housing is expensive, and getting more expensive. Rising home prices and mortgage rates have pushed typical monthly payments $900 to $1,000 higher than just a few years ago. When you’re facing those numbers, splitting costs with someone you trust starts to look less like a compromise and more like a strategy.
According to the National Association of Realtors, many first-time buyers are now waiting until their late 30s and 40s to purchase homes. People are prioritizing financial stability and homeownership before (or instead of) marriage. That timeline shift means more buyers are entering the market with partners who aren’t legally bound to them, which completely changes the game when it comes to protecting your investment and your relationship.
In expensive markets, Zillow data shows a clear upward trend of unmarried couples buying homes together. They’re leveraging two incomes to qualify for homes they couldn’t afford alone. The same logic applies to friends: Gen Z buyers get this better than anyone, with 32% saying they’re considering buying a home with friends to afford high housing costs, compared to 18% of millennials in a 2025 FirstHome IQ and National MI survey.
One Austin brokerage reported that co-buyers went from 5% of their clients in 2021 to 16% in 2023. The shift is happening fast, and it’s real.
Money Talk Is Love Talk (Whether You Like It or Not)
Here’s the uncomfortable truth: how often couples fight about money is one of the strongest predictors of divorce. A 25-year longitudinal study found that women who reported arguing “often” about money were nearly three times more likely to divorce than those who argued less. In another large national sample, financial disagreements and disagreements about sex were the only conflict topics that significantly predicted divorce 5 to 7 years later, even after controlling for income, assets, and debt levels.
The stress is measurable. A 2025 Canadian “Love and Money” survey found that 47% of couples had arguments about finances, and 11% said financial stress had them considering breaking up, separating, or divorcing. Among those who had money fights, 66% reported increased anxiety or depression, and more than half said they lost sleep after financial arguments.
The takeaway? Avoiding money conversations doesn’t protect your relationship. It threatens it.
When you’re planning to make the biggest financial commitment of your lives together, not talking about money is like building a house without a foundation. You might get the walls up, but eventually something’s going to crack.
Why February Is Your Opening
Valentine’s season already has you thinking about commitment, future plans, and what you want to build together. That makes it the perfect time to extend those conversations to financial goals and homeownership timelines.
Think of it this way: talking about money isn’t the opposite of romance. It’s one of the most loving things you can do for each other. Relationship experts and mortgage professionals who work with unmarried co-buyers emphasize that couples should “carefully consider and discuss uncomfortable situations” before buying together. Consulting professionals upfront reduces risk for everyone involved.
Framing financial conversations as an act of care (let’s protect each other and our future) rather than as a test of trust aligns with what relationship psychology already tells us: proactive money talks can strengthen perceived fairness and partnership. You’re not interrogating each other. You’re building a plan together.
What Happens When You Skip the Agreement
Attorneys who work with unmarried co-buyers are clear on this: buying a house together is a major legal commitment, regardless of marital status. Unlike married couples, who have some automatic legal protections built into family law, unmarried co-buyers are walking into ownership without those guardrails.
That means you need to walk through the “what if” scenarios before you sign anything. What happens if one of you loses your job? What if one person wants to sell in three years and the other wants to stay for ten? What if you break up? What if one of you can’t make a mortgage payment?
When co-buyers don’t set rules for maintenance, large repairs, buyouts, or payment scenarios, conflicts spill over into both the relationship and the investment. Sometimes that forces sales at bad times. Sometimes it ends in litigation. Neither option is what you signed up for when you were excitedly touring open houses together.
Surveys on relationship breakdown consistently show that money issues and unclear expectations are major sources of strain. Formalizing expectations in writing is one of the most effective ways to reduce the ambiguity that fuels conflict down the road.
How to Start the Conversation
If you’re ready to have the talk but don’t know where to start, here are the questions you need to work through together:
Financial readiness: What are your credit scores? How much can each of you contribute to the down payment? What’s your monthly budget for housing costs? Are there debts or financial obligations that could affect your ability to pay?
Ownership structure: Will you own the property 50/50, or will ownership percentages reflect different contribution levels? How will you split mortgage payments, property taxes, insurance, and maintenance costs?
Decision-making: How will you handle big decisions about repairs, renovations, or selling? What happens if you disagree?
Exit strategies: What’s the plan if one of you wants out? Can one person buy the other out, and if so, at what valuation? What happens if the relationship ends? What if one of you gets a job across the country?
Day-to-day logistics: If you’re living together, how will you split household expenses beyond the mortgage? Who’s responsible for yard work, repairs, coordinating with contractors?
These aren’t fun questions, but they’re necessary ones. The good news is that tools exist to help you work through them in a structured way. Pairgap’s Compatibility Assessment helps you understand your financial psychology and communication styles before you buy, so you know where you’re aligned and where you’ll need extra agreements.
Put It in Writing
Once you’ve had the conversations, put everything in writing. This is where Pairgap’s Real Estate Prenup becomes essential. It’s a customizable template that outlines shared expectations and responsibilities and mitigates the risks associated with shared ownership.
A real estate prenup addresses things like how the property will be owned, how expenses will be shared, what happens if one co-buyer wants to sell their share, and how disputes will be resolved. It protects both of you from the financial risks of shared ownership and encourages thorough discussion of expectations and concerns upfront.
The prenup is customizable to fit your specific co-ownership arrangement, whether you’re equal partners or contributing different amounts. Think of it as relationship insurance for your biggest investment.
The Bottom Line
Buying a home with someone you’re not married to is a growing, legitimate, financially smart path to homeownership. But it only works if you talk about money before you sign the papers.
February is already a month about love, commitment, and thinking about the future. Use that energy to have the conversation that protects both your relationship and your investment. Calculate your combined buying power with Pairgap’s Co-Buyer Calculator, take the compatibility assessment, and start building your real estate prenup.
Because the best way to protect your partnership is to talk about the hard stuff before it gets hard. And that’s something worth celebrating more than any box of chocolates.
