Co ownership of a house

Very basic not legal or financial understanding of ways people can own a home together. Its unlikely but it can come up in cohousing

There are 3 main types of ownership structures

Tenancy in common

My very basic understanding is that 2 people can put up unequal amounts of money for the same property and both people get full access to the property. You just have different shares. You are able to pass on your rights to the property without consent of the other tenant to whoever you want.

Joint tenancy

All co owners share a property equally and if one of the owners dies the shares of the property automatically gets transferred to the surviving member. Good for family members and older friends

Tenancy by the entirety

Basically only married couples get this privilege of ownership structure. Similar to joint tenancy but you have to get the other person's approval to do anything with the property. You're making decisions as one being.

In general you don't want to own property with anybody but I guess the safest is a tenancy in common arrangement because it allows for the most flexibility when it comes to ownership and shares. Creating a coownership agreement with your own individual legal representation and extreme financial / personality vetting seem to be the only ways to hedge against bad co owners. But at the end of the day it's still a risk. Get to know your local laws and speak with a lawyer on the doomsday scenarios that can come up so you are prepared.

Also the mortgage might be trickier to get as co owners because the mortgage company is gonna assume worst case scenario too.

This is hyper local and hyper specific to the mortgage companies and laws in your city so that's all I got.

Until next time 😎

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