Two Couples, One Mortgage

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/07/two-couples-one-mortgage/374102/

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Not the author's street, but another one that is kind of similar (NCinDC/Flickr)

Last December, my partner Rebecca and I bought a rowhouse with another couple. Our wedding was this May. Next month, we’re expecting a baby—the other couple’s baby.

For most of our adult lives, Rebecca and I lived in houses full of roommates and loved it. Before our most recent move, we rented a rambling five-bedroom house with four friends. When we started talking about getting married, we realized our biggest fear was that we’d leave these important kinds of friendships behind and end up living in what she jokingly called a “love/torture cave of nuclear family loneliness.” Neither of us wanted that.

It turned out two of our closest friends (Rebecca and one member of that couple had gone to college together) felt similarly and we decided to do something different and move in all together. At the time we didn't know anyone else who had done such a thing, though later we discovered a friend of a friend living in another co-op house less than a mile away, and she has helped us figure this out. We found a house we liked and made an offer. A couple days after we closed, before we’d even painted the walls and moved in, they found out they were expecting.

The house is in a Northwest D.C. neighborhood, close to a bilingual elementary school, a public library, and pool. Several of our friends live on the same block. We have a screened-in back porch, a little yard and vegetable patch, and a two-car garage.

[SheilaT]

1. This seems like a very sensible

solution to the high cost of living. These two couples seemed to have come to a wonderful arrangement that works for them. But I do hope they have good advance directives in case one marriage comes to an end, or other such contingencies.

[xchrom]

2. +1

[aint_no_life_nowhere]

5. True

but I lament the fact that people have to keep adjusting their expectations as time goes by and accepting an ever lower standard of living. Having grown up in the 50s and 60s when my dad alone could manage to feed and house our family quite comfortably, times slowly changed. First it was both parents having to be bread winners. Then it was parents needing more than one job. Then it became parents and children getting into debt for most of their lives to finance college. If now it's going to require multiple families sharing one living space like people did in the old Soviet Union, then it certainly is sensible but does it reflect the gradual erosion of the quality of life in the good ole USA?

[WillowTree]

3. Sounds like a set-up that could work well for some.

Not so much for others. It would be interesting to hear how they're doing in 5 years, 10 years.

I wish them all well!

[Drew Richards]

4. I see no problem with this as long as they are smart and file ownership as an LLC or some

Other safe corporate entity to ensure equitable ownership.

[woo me with science]

6. I find this as creepy as the media attempts to romanticize "tiny houses."

People are doing these things out of financial necessity, because our standard of living is being deliberately lowered through policy.

There is a disturbing trend of articles romanticizing the lowering of living standards out of necessity.

[Gormy Cuss]

7. It sounds like it was an intelligent choice for them.

I know people who have jointly purchased two or three family houses then converted them into condos, thus each own a unit separately and the neighbors are friends.

I've also know a lot of people who live in successful roommate sharing situations, co-ops/TICs,and co-housing arrangements. If you have the temperament for it, these are all ways it's a way to buy housing or better housing on a limited budget. One of the co-ops I know has been in place for at least 30 years.

It's also an advantage when it comes to capital improvements and saving costs on things like washers and dryers and yards and lawns.