You’re both standing in the driveway of a house you could actually afford together. The mortgage payment would be less than what you’re paying in rent. Your partner’s lease is up in two months. You’ve been together three years. The real estate agent is texting you about another showing tomorrow.
And somewhere in the back of your mind, a voice asks: aren’t we supposed to get married first?
The old rule was clear—marriage, then mortgage. But that rule was written when people got married younger and bought houses soon after. Now the average first-time buyer is in their mid-30s, often in a committed relationship that’s lasted years but hasn’t formalized. Buying a house with a partner before marriage has become common, yet the financial and legal framework hasn’t caught up. The argument for buying together seems obvious. The emotional reality is terrifying.
The real question isn’t whether you love each other enough. It’s whether you’ve structured the decision to survive what happens if you don’t.
The Case Everyone Makes (And Why It’s Incomplete)
The financial logic seems airtight. You’re throwing away $2,400 a month on rent. A mortgage on the same square footage would cost $2,200, and you’d be building equity. You both have stable jobs. You’ve already combined finances for vacations, furniture, a dog. Why is a house different?
Because unlike a couch or a vacation, a house creates a forced partnership that outlasts the relationship if things go wrong. And the legal structure of that partnership—who owns what, who can force a sale, what happens to the equity—gets decided now, not later when you’re splitting up and angry.
The couples who regret buying together aren’t the ones who broke up. They’re the ones who broke up and hadn’t anticipated how hard it would be to untangle a house.
What Actually Happens When Unmarried Co-Owners Split
Marriage creates default rules for dividing assets. Divorce court has a framework, however imperfect, for splitting a house. Unmarried co-ownership has none of that.
If you own a house together as unmarried partners and break up, you’re in a business dispute, not a domestic one. One of you wants to keep the house. The other wants their money out. Neither can sell without the other’s consent. Neither can refinance the mortgage to remove the other’s name without qualifying on a single income, which is often impossible on the same house you bought together.
The most common outcome: you both stay on the mortgage, one person lives there and pays the other “rent,” and both of you resent the arrangement while neither can move on financially. The house becomes a trap.
The second most common outcome: you sell in a rush, probably at a loss after only a few years of ownership, because that’s the only way to sever the tie.
The outcome almost no one gets: a clean, fair split where both people walk away satisfied.
For more on how ownership decisions create long-term constraints, see why selling too early often means losing money.
The Ownership Structure Nobody Explains Properly
When you buy a house with someone you’re not married to, you have two main options for how to hold title: joint tenancy or tenancy in common.
Joint tenancy means you each own 50%, and if one of you dies, the other automatically inherits the whole property. This sounds romantic until you realize it also means neither of you can sell your share without the other’s consent, and you can’t will your half to anyone else.
Tenancy in common means you can own unequal shares (say, 60/40 if one person puts more down), you can sell your portion independently, and you can leave your share to someone other than your co-owner. This is the structure that actually makes sense for unmarried couples, but most people default to joint tenancy without understanding the difference.
Even if you choose the right structure, it doesn’t solve the practical problem: mortgages aren’t divisible. If you break up, both names stay on the loan until it’s paid off or refinanced. Your ex’s missed payments tank your credit score. Their financial screw-ups are yours, legally, until the house is sold.
The Contract That Should Exist (But Usually Doesn’t)
The legally sound version of buying a house with someone you’re not married to involves a cohabitation agreement or property agreement drafted by a lawyer. It spells out:
- Who owns what percentage (especially if contributions aren’t equal)
- What happens if one person wants to sell and the other doesn’t
- How you’ll handle a buyout if you split (at what price, with what timeline)
- Who pays for what (mortgage, taxes, repairs, improvements)
- What happens if one person stops paying their share
This isn’t a romantic conversation. It’s a business one. And the couples who navigate breakups successfully are the ones who had this conversation before they closed on the house, when they still liked each other.
Most people don’t do this. They buy the house, assume love will figure it out, and then discover that love has no mechanism for forcing a sale or determining fair equity when one person paid for a new roof and the other didn’t.
When Buying Together Is Actually the Right Move
There are situations where buying a house before marriage makes sense, and they all share one trait: both people are financially and emotionally prepared for the possibility that they’ll need to unwind it.
If you’re both high earners who could each afford to buy the other out, the risk is manageable. If you’ve been together long enough that marriage is a matter of timing (you’re engaged, or you’d get married tomorrow if not for specific logistical reasons like immigration or taxes), the decision calculates differently. If you’re putting together a cohabitation agreement and treating the house as a shared investment with clear exit terms, you’re doing it right.
The version that leads to disaster: you’re stretching to afford the house together, neither of you could carry it alone, and you’re buying because the market feels urgent and marriage feels like a formality you’ll get to eventually. That’s when the house becomes the thing that traps you in a relationship that’s already ending, because neither of you can afford to leave.
The Marriage-First Alternative Isn’t as Clean as It Sounds
The advice to wait until you’re married before buying isn’t wrong, but it’s also not a perfect solution. Married couples split up too. Divorce doesn’t make untangling a house easy—it just provides a legal process for forcing it.
What marriage does provide is a set of default assumptions about fairness. Courts treat marital assets as shared, even if only one name is on the deed or mortgage. There’s a system, however slow and expensive, for making someone sell if they’re refusing.
Unmarried co-owners don’t have that system. If your ex refuses to sell, you’re filing a partition lawsuit, which is expensive, slow, and often results in a forced sale at auction for less than market value.
So the real advantage of marriage isn’t romance—it’s infrastructure. You get a legal framework for what happens when things go wrong. Buying a house together without marriage means you’re opting out of that framework and need to build your own, which most people don’t.
The Rent-vs-Buy Calculation Changes When You Add This Risk
The standard rent-vs-buy analysis compares monthly costs and assumes you’ll own the house long enough to recover transaction costs—usually at least five years, sometimes more depending on your market.
When you’re buying with someone you’re not married to, that timeline becomes a major variable. If there’s a meaningful chance you break up in the next three years, and breaking up means selling the house at a loss, the expected value of buying drops. You’re not just comparing rent to mortgage—you’re comparing rent to mortgage plus the probability-weighted cost of an early forced sale.
This doesn’t mean don’t buy. It means the math needs to be even more in favor of buying to justify the risk. If you’re in a market where home prices are flat or falling, where transaction costs are high, or where you’re stretching financially to afford the house, the additional breakup risk tips the scales back toward renting.
The couples who should feel comfortable buying together are the ones who’d still come out ahead even if they had to sell in two years. If that scenario would be a financial catastrophe, you’re not ready.
What Nobody Tells You About Income Qualification
Here’s a practical problem that doesn’t get enough attention: when you buy a house together, both incomes help you qualify for a larger mortgage. That’s great for getting approval. It’s terrible if you break up.
Let’s say you make $70,000 and your partner makes $90,000. Together you qualify for a $400,000 house. You split up. Neither of you can refinance to remove the other’s name, because neither income alone supports a $400,000 mortgage. You’re stuck.
The version that works: you buy a house that either of you could afford to refinance into on a single income. That usually means buying significantly less house than you qualify for together. Most couples don’t do this, because the whole point of buying together is to afford more house.
But if you optimize for “most house we can afford together,” you’re also maximizing the trap you’re in if you split. The financially sound version is buying the house one of you could carry alone, and using the second income for savings or paying down the mortgage faster—not for qualifying for more house.
For more on qualifying decisions that create future problems, see why stretching to buy often backfires.
The Version That Actually Protects Both of You
If you’re going to buy a house with someone you’re not married to, here’s the structure that minimizes disaster:
- Hold title as tenants in common, with ownership percentages that reflect actual contributions (including down payment, closing costs, and any renovation funds)
- Draft a cohabitation agreement that specifies buyout terms, what happens if one person wants to sell, and how you’ll handle a breakup
- Buy a house that either of you could afford to refinance into on a single income
- Keep separate accounts for tracking who paid what, especially for major improvements
- Agree now on how you’ll handle it if one person wants out—right of first refusal, appraisal process, timeline for buyout
This isn’t romantic. It’s also not a sign that you don’t trust each other. It’s a recognition that people change, relationships end, and a house is a multi-hundred-thousand-dollar asset that shouldn’t be governed by hope.
The decision framework: Can either of you refinance the full mortgage alone? Have you documented ownership percentages and buyout terms in writing? Would selling in two years still make financial sense? If the answer to any of these is no, you’re taking on more risk than the monthly payment suggests.
The Question You’re Not Asking (But Should Be)
The real issue isn’t whether buying a house before marriage is financially smart. It’s whether you’re using the house as a substitute for the conversation about marriage you’re not having.
If you’re buying together because you love each other, trust each other, and are planning a life together, why not get married first? If the answer is “we’re not ready for that level of commitment,” then you’re definitely not ready to co-own a house, which is harder to undo than a marriage.
If the answer is “marriage is just a piece of paper,” then a cohabitation agreement is also just a piece of paper—and you should be willing to sign one.
The couples who make buying before marriage work are the ones who treat it like the serious legal and financial commitment it is, not like a practice run for marriage. They have the hard conversations up front. They protect themselves legally. They don’t buy more house than one person could handle alone.
Everyone else is betting that love will solve logistics. Sometimes it does. Usually it doesn’t.
Are you buying this house together because it’s the right financial move, or because it feels like the next step and you haven’t figured out why you’re not taking the actual next step?