When Victoria Mortimer started looking to buy a flat in London 10 years ago, she quickly realised that there was no way her budget was stretching far enough.
And as a single woman with no access to the Bank of Mum and Dad, her options were limited.
So, it only made sense that she teamed up with a friend to secure the two-bedroom property in Hackney she’d long been dreaming of.
They bought it for £420,000, splitting their £42,000 deposit in half and paying £21,000 each.
They picked up the keys in July 2015, and for the first two years, everything went smoothly.
Their share of the bill was £600 per month each in mortgage payments, and it saved them from renting through a private landlord.
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‘We had been friends for more than a decade. We were thick as thieves and never had an argument,’ Victoria, a 38-year-old finance director from London, shares.
‘It seemed like a good basis for getting on the ladder. At the time, we didn’t think we could afford to buy individually.’
But when Victoria met a new boyfriend, she quickly realised that she wanted to live with him, which is when ‘things changed’ between her and her housemate.
‘I was spending more and more time with him at his place. I was conscious I was spending time there and not contributing,’ she reflects.
While Victoria suggested renting out her room to cover her share of the mortgage, she claims her friend wanted to sell up completely – and so, they were at loggerheads over what to do.
Victoria believes that putting the property on the market would’ve ‘shot us both in the foot,’ and felt that it ‘didn’t make sense.’ Ultimately, they just ‘couldn’t agree’ on a solution.
Eventually, in October 2018, Victoria moved out but kept her share in the house and continued to pay her side of the mortgage.
‘Ultimately, it caused a rupture in our friendship because we couldn’t agree on the best way forward. It was like a divorce,’ she says.
However, fast forward to January 2020, and Victoria and her boyfriend ended up parting ways after realising they ‘just weren’t right for each other.’
So, as she couldn’t afford to rent elsewhere again and pay her existing mortgage, she was left with no choice but to move back into her old room – with a friend she’d fallen out with.
‘We couldn’t even look each other in the eye. It got to the point where she could buy me out,’ she says, noting that she also managed to buy a home – a £460,000 two-bedroom flat – by herself after a year of tension.
Looking back, Victoria feels that ‘when you break up with your partner, you’re heartbroken, but it hits differently when it’s a friend.’ Now, she’d do things differently.
‘Everyone who knows I went through this would say, “I bet you tell everyone to avoid it like the plague.” If you’re going to do it, do it with caution,’ she reflects.
‘If you think you might be able to do it on your own in the next year or two, just sit tight and do it on your own.’
Likewise, she urges people who are looking to buy with friends to have a conversation about what they’ll do if they end up disagreeing – or even falling out – once they’ve moved in.
‘Our solicitor didn’t advise a Declaration of Trust…it’s a bit like getting a pre-nup,’ she adds, referencing a legal document that outlines the financial details of a property purchase between two people, specifying how much money each party has put in and how much they’ll be entitled to if they sell up separately.
‘If we’d been advised to do one of those, it would have forced the conversation of where our heads were at if I wanted to move out.’
Despite Victoria’s experience, it’s little surprise that friends are now teaming up to buy together.
Between 2013 and 2021, home ownership among young people had risen from 8% in 2013 to just over 12% in 2021 – but in 2021, they were still half as likely to own their own home than 30 years earlier.
Further research from Lloyds Bank shows that, in 2024, 51% of young first-time buyers were increasingly willing to consider ‘non-traditional routes’ into home ownership – such as purchasing with a friend (24%) or sibling (22%).
The most common reasons for choosing these routes were to make it more affordable (60%), because they trusted that person (56%), and sadly, because they felt they had no other routes towards home ownership (14%).
Not everyone’s experience is negative, though, as shortly before the pandemic hit, 30-year-old Cullen Farleigh and Olamide Soyemi decided to take the leap and pool all their money together.
After doing the calculations, they realised that their joint income and savings were enough to buy them a house, and they ended up with a three-bedroom property in East London sooner than they expected.
They decided to take the risk as they felt they didn’t have another choice, noting that they were ‘always interested in property’ but ‘never took it seriously’ because of the ludicrous prices.
‘We couldn’t afford a house individually,’ Ola told Metro. ‘We could trust each other as friends, and we knew that would be a good investment to make long-term.’
The pair had met and subsequently lived together at university in 2015, so they knew that it was likely to be a housemate match. And in the end, it paid off.
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