Friends now make up the single largest group of people buying homes together without a marriage license, according to a new national report, and the share of all U.S. home purchases involving any kind of co-buyer has climbed to 31.5% in 2026, up from 25% just five years ago.
A five-year climb, not a blip
The figures come from CoBuy’s 2026 National Co-Buying and Co-Owning Report, which combines federal housing data with the company’s own decade of platform activity and survey responses from more than 6,200 co-buyers and co-owners collected across five annual reports. The growth has been steady rather than sudden: 25% of purchases involved co-buyers in 2021, rising to 26.7% in 2023, 29% in 2024, 30% in 2025, and now 31.5% this year. CoBuy estimates 64 million Americans currently co-own a home with someone they’re not married to, in groups averaging 3.7 people.
Friends account for 61% of people who say they’re planning to buy with someone, but only 46% of people who’ve actually closed on a home together — a 15-point gap the report attributes to friend groups being more likely than family members to stall out before a purchase. More than 60% of co-buying groups never complete a purchase together at all, most commonly because they can’t agree on financial terms or an exit plan. Family co-buyers, by contrast, close at a higher rate relative to how often they start: 33% of people planning a purchase are buying with family, rising slightly to 37% among people who’ve actually closed.
These aren’t broke twentysomethings splitting rent
The demographic profile undercuts the assumption that co-buying is purely a housing-affordability workaround for the young and cash-strapped. One in four co-buyers is over 40, nearly half report household income above $100,000, and 93% have credit scores above 700, per CoBuy’s data. The median co-buying budget is close to $700,000, and 72% are buying a primary residence rather than an investment property, with 80% planning to actually live in the home and 31% committing to a decade or more of shared ownership.
The trend also shows up in broader housing data. The National Association of Realtors’ 2026 Home Buyer and Seller Generational Trends Report found the share of Gen Z buyers purchasing as unmarried couples jumped to 17% this year, up from 10% the year before, alongside a sharp drop in married-couple purchases among that age group. Legal and financial complexity is the biggest gap CoBuy identified between people still planning a purchase and those who’ve completed one: 96% of prospective co-buyers say they need help drafting a co-ownership agreement, and co-buyers report needing 21 percentage points more legal guidance overall than people who’ve already closed. Only 44% of co-buying groups have settled on an even ownership split, with 31% still undecided on the terms altogether — a sign that the paperwork, not the friendship, is usually what determines whether these deals actually happen.
