Tammy Kremer (left) and Hayley Currier are friends who bought a home together. With housing prices on the rise, some people are purchasing homes with people other than romantic partners. Via Hayley Currier and Getty Images/Emily Bogle/NPR hide caption
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They’re up 56% since February 2020, according to data from the National Association of Realtors.
There are too many buyers for too few homes. Several reasons explain the supply shortage, including a lag in home building, rising construction costs and high mortgage rates that discourage current homeowners from moving and giving up their lower rate.
After Hayley Currier and  Tammy Kremer put in an offer on a house, they paced around the backyard of the apartment they shared, nerves jangling.
“We’ve done everything we can,” Kremer said.
“And all we can do is be anxious at each other,” Currier added, before laughing.
Currier and Kremer, both in their late 30s, are longtime friends who bonded over their mutual passions for open-water swimming, Jewish rituals and political organizing. They’ve lived together for the last nine months in a rental in Berkeley, Calif., along with one other roommate.
Friends Tammy Kremer (left) and Hayley Currier co-bought a home in the Bay Area. Via Tammy Kremer hide caption
This shared home has given Currier what she calls “such a beautiful community and feeling of connection and home.” It has also confirmed for her that she and Kremer would live well together for the long term.
The ideal arrangement, she says, is that “Tammy and I still have intertwined lives and lives that we get to build together, but just a little bit of private space also.”
Perhaps a duplex, the two of them thought, or two units on the same plot of land. So in March, they started searching for a place to buy together.
A significant number of Americans have done what Currier and Kremer are doing. Several housing industry reports from 2024 found that about 15% of homebuyers bought their home with a friend or relative.
Daryl Fairweather, chief economist at the real estate company Redfin, got wind of the growing interest in co-buying through stories from the company’s agents. “ We’ve heard of more buyers having to team up to be able to afford a home,” she says. “ This is a story that we’ve been hearing really for a long time because affordability just keeps getting worse and worse.”
Part of the allure of co-buying is that, in an era of rising prices, two wallets are better than one. Home prices have risen more than 50% since 2020.
“Five years ago, the median household would be able to buy a typical home with room to spare,” says Kara Ng, a senior economist at the real estate marketplace company Zillow. “Now the median owner would need a $17,000 raise in order to afford a typical home,  and that’s assuming they already saved 20% down.”
In some parts of the U.S., homeownership is even further out of reach. Ng says that in California, the median earner would need a six-figure raise.
California happens to be where Currier and Kremer were looking for a home. Like other co-buyers who spoke to NPR, Kremer couldn’t afford to buy alone, at least not where she