Buy a house with a mate - a good idea?

craptakular

craptakular

craptakular

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Joined
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Sussex, UK
Lo,

Heres the situation, im 25 my mate is 29. We both are single and can't see us getting married or anything like that for a good few years. So we are contemplating buy a house together as mates (we are not admitting defeat and going gay :))

We both get on really well, have identical interests & both are well rounded, mentally stable individuals! We both ern £25-30k each in stable professional public sector jobs.

With us buying together we can still have a social life and would be on the property ladder.

Obviously we would have to draw up a legal contract about when (or should I say if?) we get girlfriends/married and want to sell we would split the house 50/50, sensible things like that..

Just wondering, Is this a good idea? Anyone else done anything similar?
 
Don't forget your flagpole!

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Seriously, how well do you know him, how long have you known him?
 
Not a bad idea IMO, especially if you want to be well off long term. There was a series of programmes on TV about friends buying places together, can't remember what it was called though.
 
if you do make sure you arange the situations that may come up (ie birds moving in and then the bill dividing)
 
ste_bla said:
if you do make sure you arange the situations that may come up (ie birds moving in and then the bill dividing)
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Yeh, we both dont stand for trollops. By that I mean we have mates that have fallen victim to the dreaded "gold digger". Birds moving in is ok, if they pay rent and bills. Overtime, if one of us wanna sell up and buy a house with a bird. Then we could sell it, all hopefully making money!
 
Would it not be worth renting or something for 6months to make sure you can live together and then look to buy at that point?

Tis a pretty big risk with a friend
 
it's a good idea but have you lived together before? Tie things up legally nice and carefully to protect both of you. Also consider what happens if one of you does meet somebody and wants to sell the house.

Goldigger!!!Lol My missus moved in to my house a few years ago but she has to pay rent, bills etc. She wouldn't be living here otherwise. I can't understand why someone would move their bird in and not ask them to pay rent/contribute to bills. It is nonsense in this day and age.

It makes sense to get on the property ladder and you certainly don't want to be paying a mortgage alone if you want to buy anything decent at all. If you do have a joint mortgage tho consider that you will surely then be financially linked so make sure neither of you have a bad "credit rating".
 
McDaniel said:
Would it not be worth renting or something for 6months to make sure you can live together and then look to buy at that point?

Tis a pretty big risk with a friend
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Possibly, but we both dont wanna waste money on renting. I think we will get on as we are pretty much identical with our interests, we have the same circle of friends.....
 
Only one thing that'll ever screw it up and that's a girl. Sort out the 'what-ifs' regarding a girl for either of you and you'll be fine I would have thought.
 
Oxy said:
Possibly, but we both dont wanna waste money on renting. I think we will get on as we are pretty much identical with our interests, we have the same circle of friends.....
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House prices seem to be coming down slightly at the moment - even if you rent for six months and then buy after that I don't think you'll be much worse off, if at all.

IMO it would be foolish to buy somewhere together without ever having lived with the guy at all first.
 
mattpc said:
it's a good idea but have you lived together before? Tie things up legally nice and carefully to protect both of you. Also consider what happens if one of you does meet somebody and wants to sell the house.
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Yeh we will have tie up the legal stuff. If one of us meets a girl and wants to sell up then we will have to, or one of us would take on all the morgage.
 
Haircut said:
House prices seem to be coming down slightly at the moment - even if you rent for six months and then buy after that I don't think you'll be much worse off, if at all.

IMO it would be foolish to buy somewhere together without ever having lived with the guy at all first.
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I think this is the first step. you can do this whilst looking for a place to buy if you havent found it already.
 
Rent somwhere for a year or so first! You could easily be throwing a good friendship away if you jump in and buy a house together.
 
I wouldn't personally bother at the moment tbh.. - all you're really doing when buying with a mortgage as opposed to renting is taking a long position of house prices rising

if you're sharing with a mate then it is unlikely that this will be really long term more likely I'd presume you'd be wanting to sell in 3-5 years - basically what you're doing is betting that house prices will rise significantly in 3-5 years.

If you believe there will be a significant rise over the period you expect to be owning the house for (enough to cover the increased cost of a mortgage VS renting and also the fees involved in buying/selling) then it might be a good idea.

If you don't believe they will rise significantly then it may save you money in the short term to simply rent for the moment.

Obviously there are other factors like - how well do you know your mate, do you know for sure you'd be able to live with him, will you both agree to sell at the same time etc.. - you need to plan ahead when you'll both sell up etc.. and also ground rules for someone moving their G/F in etc...
 
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