For Some Unwed Couples, Buying a New Home Comes Before Marriage
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Here's your money briefing for Monday, November 25th. I'm J.R. Whelan for The Wall Street Journal. You know the saying, first comes love, then comes marriage? But for some unmarried couples, it's first comes love, then comes a mortgage.
You know, rising rents and interest rates have created a sense of urgency for them. They say, hey, I have $50,000 saved today. That may not take me as far if I sit and wait. So they are jumping right into buying the home together before they even gotten engaged.
We'll talk to Wall Street Journal reporter Dalvin Brown after the break.
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Some unmarried couples are holding off spending on a wedding and instead putting their money toward a down payment on a home. Wall Street Journal personal finance reporter Dalvin Brown joins me.
Why are more unmarried couples buying homes before marriage?
So, Dalvin, first comes love, then comes a mortgage?
Exactly. More and more couples are skipping the traditional path of engagement, then marriage, then buying a home, and instead they're jumping straight into home ownership, seeing it as a more practical investment in their future.
How many unmarried couples are doing this?
So last year, it was just over half a million unmarried couples who said they had recently bought homes together. And that's up 46% from a decade ago. And that's a huge jump.
Now, just to be clear, are we talking about unmarried people in a relationship or are there also close friends doing this?
For this story, we're talking mostly about couples in romantic relationships. There's definitely a growing trend of close friends co-buying homes, too, especially in an expensive housing market.
So the people in romantic relationships, why are they buying as opposed to, say, renting a place?
For the couples that I talk to, it's about investing in equity rather than paying rent indefinitely. You know, rising rents and interest rates have created a sense of urgency for them. They say, hey, I have $50,000 saved today. That may not take me as far if I sit and wait. So they are jumping right into buying the home together before they even gotten engaged. So one of the sources I spoke to lives in Washington, D.C., and they bought a condo together because they saw it as a more permanent step for their future. And they did that even before they got engaged. They plan to get married next year. And what they've told me is that the wedding will cost less than the down payment on their home.
Yeah, how does the expense of buying fit in with all the other expenses of living together and eventually getting married?
These couples are saying that if they can get a mortgage together now, it often shakes out to be less than what they would end up paying for a wedding. They also figure that housing prices are rising faster than wedding prices. And so they're like, hey, let's get the big purchase out of the way. And then a wedding can just happen when it happens.
Around what age are these couples doing this?
People of all ages are buying homes together before marriage or without being married.
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