Gen Z Women Buy Homes Together, Skip Waiting for Marriage

Remember that joke about buying a house with your best friend if you're both still single at 40? Gen Z women aren't waiting that long, and they're not joking.

Platonic co-buying is the new housing trend where friends pool their money to purchase homes together. According to new research, 48% of Gen Z and Millennial women would consider buying a place with a friend, and many already have.

The math makes sense. Mortgage rates have nearly doubled since the pandemic while wages stayed flat. The typical first-time homebuyer is now 40 years old, an all-time high.

So young people stopped waiting. By combining incomes, friends discovered they could qualify for better loans and afford homes years sooner than going solo.

Take Francesca, Graeme, Sonja, and Kieran. The four 34-year-old friends bought a £650,000 London flat together in 2022. Since then, both couples have welcomed babies and are now raising their families under one roof.

Or Ayesha and Jasmin, best friends for 15 years who both got divorced around the same time. They bought a five-bedroom house together in Washington D.C. for $905,000 and are co-parenting their five kids between them.

Even Barbie's getting in on it. Her 2026 DreamHouse, listed this summer on Rightmove (the UK's largest property platform), features a bridge connecting to a second house for friends to live side by side.

The Ripple Effect

This shift goes beyond splitting mortgages. When researchers asked women what they wanted in their dream homes, the answers revealed something beautiful: large gardens, open-plan kitchens, game rooms, reading nooks, and spaces dedicated entirely to joy.

These aren't features for living alone. They're built for summer evenings with friends spilling into the garden, kids playing nearby, someone losing at Mario Kart inside.

The women surveyed said co-owning with friends would boost their happiness (56%) and give them a stronger sense of community (62%). Psychologists agree that living with people you love reduces stress, increases life satisfaction, and creates the kind of daily support network humans actually need.

Young women aren't just solving a housing crisis. They're redesigning what home means, choosing the people they love right now instead of waiting for a traditional path that might never come.

Turns out the real DreamHouse was the friends we bought property with along the way.