Co-Buying a Home in
Massachusetts: 2026 Edition

1. Why this exists

Co-buying is a way for three or more people to purchase a home together. It is legal everywhere we work, more common than most people realize, and runs on a different set of rules than the single-buyer mortgage most of us were taught was the only real option.

This guide exists because the model is mainstream-ready and has not been written down honestly anywhere. Co-buying takes many shapes. Three young professionals buying a triple-decker as their first investment property. Two couples sharing a two-family in Somerville so their kids grow up next door to one another. A handful of older adults who want to stay independent without staying alone. A maker collective splitting a multi-unit so the same building covers both their housing and their workspace. In almost every one of these arrangements, the financials beat the alternative they replace, and the living situation does too. Both at once is rare in housing right now. We're putting this out as groundwork to make that combination ordinary.

To be clear: co-buying involves real legal and financial decisions that deserve professional review. Anything in this guide that affects your transaction should be confirmed with an attorney and a lender. The barriers that have kept co-buying from going mainstream are what Restored Living was built to address, and we do this work at a price point we don't believe any alternative matches. What follows is the most accurate, current picture of co-buying in Massachusetts that we can produce, written so you can walk into those professional conversations already knowing the shape of what you're doing.

2. What co-buying actually is

Three or more people purchase a home together, share costs, and build equity individually.

Co-buying is distinct from couples owning jointly. The right way to think about it is closer to how a company or a collaborative is organized: a small group of aligned people pooling resources to achieve something none of them could attain alone. That something happens to be a home.

Fractional ownership is not new. It is how stocks work: thousands of investors hold ownership in a single company. It is how commercial real estate works: multiple partners with controlling interests buy and operate large buildings together every day. Housing has been the holdout. The asset most directly tied to where and how people actually live is the one that has resisted shared ownership longest. Co-buying is the catch-up. The financial argument is real, and it is not the only argument. The deeper case is for getting people to work together, lower the barrier to ownership, and put real assets in the hands of the people who live in them. Even if the home you co-buy is not the one you keep forever, you walk away with partial control of an asset that appreciates, holds tangible value, and exists as a real thing in the world rather than a number on a screen.

The form co-buying takes varies. A group of professionals in their late twenties using a three-family as a stepping stone to future ownership. Two couples buying a multifamily in the neighborhood they want to raise children in. A handful of older adults staying close to their independence by sharing a single property, costs, and one another's company. A maker collective splitting space and equipment in a converted multifamily. Different phases of life, different priorities, the same mechanics underneath: combined buying power lets the group own a property at a lower per-person cost than any of them could rent the equivalent of, and work together to do more with the home than any of them could do alone.

For most of recorded history, people did not live alone. Multigenerational households, jointly held land, shared dwellings under one roof. The single-family detached home with one signature on the mortgage is a seventy-five-year experiment, and it is breaking under its own weight. Prices have outrun wages by an order of magnitude. Loneliness has reached the level of a public health emergency. The country is more isolated, more indebted, and more priced out of ownership than at any point in living memory. Co-buying is not a workaround for a system that doesn't work. It is a return to a way of holding property that the math, the demographics, the housing stock, and human well-being are all pointing toward at once. The version we are building is not nostalgic. It uses the tools and protections that earlier generations did not have. The question is whether enough people choose to build their lives around it before the next generation inherits a country where ownership is reserved for the people who already had it.

3. Why we're publishing this for Massachusetts

Aside from being based here and having grown up here, we see Massachusetts as a state where co-buying is acutely needed and uniquely positioned to work.

The median single-family home in Massachusetts hit $638,000 in 2025.[1] In Greater Boston, $800,000.[2] Home prices have risen 73% since 2000. Inflation-adjusted household incomes have risen 4%.[3] To afford a two-bedroom rental at the federal 30%-of-income threshold, a Massachusetts household needs to earn $95,476.[4] Over half of Greater Boston renters are cost-burdened. More than a quarter spend over half their income on housing.[5]

Supply is the binding constraint. The state has a 200,000+ unit housing gap and needs to build 222,000 units by 2035 to keep pace with demand.[6] Permits are down 44% from 2021 levels. The state ranks sixth-lowest in the nation in permitting rate.[7] Massachusetts is one of the densest states in the country at 900 people per square mile, and most easily developable land has already been built on. Even if every reform on the table passes today, we are three to five years from construction starts and several more from completed units. Without something unprecedented, prices are not coming down.

Massachusetts is also aging. The state projects significant growth in 75-and-over households between now and 2035.[6] Among adults aged 18 to 34, 30% report feeling lonely daily or several times a week.[9] Across all U.S. adults, 54% report feeling isolated.[10] The Surgeon General named loneliness a public health epidemic in 2023, with measurable effects on cardiovascular and mental health outcomes.[8]

Two crises overlap. The state's existing multifamily stock — the triple-deckers and two-families that fill Somerville, Medford, Jamaica Plain, Dorchester, Lowell, Worcester, and dozens of other neighborhoods — was built for shared living before single-family ideology took over. It is unusually well-suited to a model that gets treated as alternative in the rest of the country.

4. The five co-buying tracks

Most groups that come to us fall into one of five patterns. We have built each into a track: a pre-prepared plan with the group profile, the property profile, the financing approach, the bylaws template, and the exit terms drafted in advance. Custom configurations are possible. Most groups don't need one.

Track 1: Stepping Stone

Mid-twenties to mid-thirties. Three to five professionals using co-buying to enter the market a decade earlier than they otherwise could. Each contributes $30,000 to $50,000. The property is a 3- to 5-bedroom multifamily near transit, prioritized for low cost-per-bed and strong rental fundamentals. The agreement names a sell-by year, typically five to ten out, with continuation only by unanimous consent. Exit value is straightforward: equity built from mortgage payments plus a conservative appreciation factor if the property has been held long enough to warrant one.

Track 2: Couples and Co-Neighbors

Two to four couples, late twenties through forties. The group buys a multifamily together (a two-family, triple-decker, or larger) where each couple has a full unit and the building is owned jointly. The exit path is condo conversion: at a chosen point in the future, the property is split into legally separate units, and each owner controls their unit independently. Massachusetts has a well-established process for this. Couples remain neighbors, not roommates.

Track 3: Multigenerational

Two or three related households, often a parent or grandparent generation plus an adult child's household, sharing a multifamily property. The senior generation contributes more capital and pays a smaller share of monthly cost. The younger generation handles property responsibilities. The agreement governs how shares pass on, who has first right of purchase if the senior moves to assisted care, and how care responsibilities are handled if needed.

Track 4: Aging in Community

Three to six older adults, typically empty nesters, choosing to live together in a multifamily property as an alternative to individual downsizing or assisted living. Tends to involve more available capital up front and more attention to monthly cost on fixed incomes. The track addresses isolation, shared time, and shared cost in one arrangement. Often becomes multigenerational over time.

Track 5: Mission-Aligned Group

Six or more individuals or households organized around a common purpose — professional, creative, faith-based, ecological — who want to own and operate a property together over a long horizon. This is where the cooperative form tends to make sense. Bylaws govern who can join and on what terms. Decisions are made collectively. The investment is in a community as much as in a building.

We are continuing to develop the resources behind each track. The framework exists today. The library of agreement templates, lender introductions, and operating tools behind each track is being built out as we go.

5. The three ownership structures

Three legal forms dominate co-buying in Massachusetts: Tenancy in Common, Limited Liability Company, and Cooperative. We default to TIC for owner-occupant groups, recommend LLC where flexibility or liability protection matters more than cost, and reserve cooperative formation for groups planning long-horizon, mission-aligned ownership.

A note on rates: depending on the borrower profile and program, rates as low as 3.5% are possible. We assume 20% down at conventional terms throughout this guide. The reasons are explained in Section 6.

Tenancy in Common (TIC)

Each co-owner holds a defined undivided percentage of the property. Percentages do not have to be equal: a four-buyer group can hold 30%/30%/20%/20% if that reflects each person's contribution.

Financing on a TIC works like a residential mortgage. All co-buyers are listed on the loan. The lender pulls credit on each person, looks at combined income, and uses the lowest credit score in the group as the qualifying score. Income from every borrower combines. The rate the group receives is the rate any of them would receive on a single-borrower mortgage with the same combined profile. We are seeing rates in the low 6% range for owner-occupied TIC loans in the current market.

What a TIC offers

• The cleanest, lowest-cost form of ownership for owner-occupants.
• Access to the full residential mortgage market, including conventional loans and most assistance programs that apply to individual buyers.
• The right for each co-owner to rent out their interest if they relocate, while staying on title.
• Ownership percentages that can vary across owners.

Where a TIC gets harder

• Ownership transfers are not flexible. If one person wants out and the others want to stay, the typical path requires refinancing the property to remove the departing borrower from the loan. Refinancing into a higher-rate environment can be costly. The agreement should anticipate this.
• All co-owners are jointly responsible on the mortgage. If one person stops paying their share, the others' credit is on the line until the situation is resolved.
• A partition action remains technically available to any co-owner under Massachusetts law if the group cannot agree. The co-ownership agreement should narrow when and how this can happen.

Limited Liability Company (LLC)

The LLC owns the property. Co-buyers hold membership interests in the LLC, governed by an operating agreement.

Financing on an LLC is commercial, not residential. Lenders evaluate the property's income potential as much as the borrowers' personal profiles. The more the group puts down, the safer the loan looks, and the better the rate. Down payment is typically 20% to 30%. Rate runs roughly 0.75 percentage points higher than a comparable TIC mortgage. Closing costs are higher. Massachusetts charges an LLC an annual filing fee of approximately $560.

What an LLC offers

• The most flexibility on ownership transfers. When a member leaves, the group transfers shares of the LLC, not the property itself. There is no refinancing event. Ownership percentages can be adjusted by simply re-issuing membership interests.
• Cleaner separation between the property's liabilities and the owners' personal exposure. If something goes wrong with the building or a tenant, the LLC is the party on the line.
• The simplest framework if non-occupant investors are involved.

Where an LLC gets harder

• Higher rate. Higher down. No FHA, no first-time buyer assistance, no homestead protections that apply to individual residents.
• An operating agreement is required from day one and needs to cover decision-making, transfer rights, distributions, and dissolution. There is no fallback if it's incomplete.
• Tax treatment is not automatic. The default for a multi-member LLC is partnership taxation, which suits most groups but should be confirmed with an accountant.

Cooperative (Co-Op)

A cooperative corporation owns the property. Co-buyers hold shares in the cooperative and a proprietary lease for the unit they occupy.

Financing on a cooperative is the least familiar of the three to most lenders. Some Massachusetts banks offer share loans; others do not. In market-rate cooperatives, financing is available but limited. In limited-equity cooperatives, where resale prices are capped to preserve affordability, the form can mean early residents do not fully recoup their monthly outlays through equity. That trade-off is fine if affordability is the explicit mission. It can become a problem if it isn't well understood from the start.

What a cooperative offers

• The strongest framework for groups organized around a common purpose — faith-based, ecological, professional — where governance and continuity matter more than transaction simplicity.
• Share transfers work like LLC membership transfers. No refinancing event.
• The bylaws give existing residents real input into who joins and on what terms. Useful when the people are the point.

Where a cooperative gets harder

• More expensive and more complex to set up. The corporation, the bylaws, the proprietary lease, and the share offering all require legal work that goes beyond a TIC or LLC formation.
• Lender appetite is the constraint. Groups should confirm financing availability before committing to the form.
• Best suited to long-term ownership. Not the right fit for groups with stepping-stone or short-horizon plans.

How to choose

The form should follow the plan. A group that wants the lowest cost of capital and plans to live in the property will almost always be best served by a TIC. A group that wants flexibility, liability protection, or includes investors should look hard at an LLC. A group whose primary commitment is to a shared mission and a long horizon should look at a cooperative.

6. How financing actually works

The financing process is more familiar than most groups expect. Each co-buyer assembles their documents the way a single applicant would: pay stubs, W-2s, bank statements, tax returns, asset and debt inventory. The lender pulls credit on each person, runs the file, and underwrites the group as a single borrowing entity.

The differences from a solo mortgage are three:

The lender uses the lowest credit score in the group. One weak file affects the rate everyone gets. A strong income profile in the group can compensate for the rate impact, but not eliminate it.

The lender wants to see the formation documents. For a TIC, that's the co-ownership agreement and the title structure. For an LLC, that's the operating agreement. For a cooperative, that's the bylaws and the share structure. Some lenders will require these in place before closing. Others are more flexible.

The lender treats LLC and cooperative purchases as commercial. The underwriting weight shifts toward the property's income potential. Rent rolls, comparable rents, and operating expenses become central. A TIC, by contrast, is underwritten primarily on the borrowers' personal profiles and a property appraisal, the same way a single-family residential mortgage works.

Most loan officers have not closed a co-buying transaction. The mechanics aren't exotic, but the documentation is unfamiliar, and we have seen otherwise straightforward deals stall on lender confusion. Salem Five and LoanDepot are two MA-active lenders who have signaled interest in working through co-buying transactions. We expect to publish a more comprehensive partner list in the next edition of this guide.

Why we recommend 20% down

A group can technically put down less than 20%. We do not recommend it, even when the option is on the table.

Take a $750,000 multifamily, four-buyer group, 6.5% rate, 30-year term, no other variables changed:

PMI alone runs roughly $300 to $400 a month at 5% down on a property of this size, and remains in place until the loan-to-value ratio reaches 80%. That typically takes six to eight years of payments, longer if appreciation is flat. On the four-person group above, that's roughly $25,000 to $35,000 of pure PMI cost across the group before the milestone clears.

Each additional 5% of down payment also reduces rate exposure modestly and improves the group's position in a soft market. A 20%-down group has $150,000 of equity at closing on a $750,000 home. A 5%-down group has $37,500. A 10% price decline puts the 5%-down group underwater. The 20%-down group has a buffer.

The City of Boston's Co-Purchasing Pilot

The City of Boston launched a co-purchasing pilot offering up to $50,000 per qualifying household as a zero-percent deferred loan. Boston deserves credit for this. Any city stepping into co-purchasing facilitation in 2025 is making a bet that the model is real, and we think the bet is well-placed. As far as we know, this is the first municipal program of its kind in Massachusetts. We expect more to follow as the model becomes more visible.

The program applies to a subset of properties in a subset of Boston neighborhoods. For groups buying in Boston who qualify, the application is worth the time. For everyone else, the model works without it.

7. State of the market

This is the part of the guide that draws on data we built ourselves. It updates monthly.

We pull on-market sale and rental data across Massachusetts on a rolling basis. As of the most recent full pass, our analysis covers 18,767 sale listings settled between January 2025 and February 2026, with 3-to-7 bedroom counts, across 325 Massachusetts towns and cities. Rental benchmarks come from a parallel pull of active multi-bedroom rental listings in the same period, summarized by town and by bedroom count.

For each sale listing, we calculate a total monthly cost of ownership per bedroom: principal, interest, property tax, insurance, maintenance reserve, and a baseline utilities allocation. Financing assumptions are 6.5% interest rate, 20% down, 30-year term. Property tax is set at 1.15% of value annually, in line with the statewide effective rate. Insurance is roughly 0.5% of value annually. Maintenance reserve is sized to roughly 1% of value annually. We compare that monthly cost-per-bed against the median rent-per-bed in the same town, at the same bedroom count. The methodology is consistent across the entire dataset and is described in full in Section 12.

The figures below are summarized from our active scoring shortlist of 388 properties, 304 of which carry a town-and-bedroom rent benchmark. The full town-by-town and property-level dataset is available on request to journalists, researchers, lenders, and partners.

The cost-bucket distribution

Each property with a benchmark gets a cost-bucket assignment relative to its town's rent-per-bed at the matching bedroom count:

Across the benchmarked shortlist, 52.4% of properties sit in the Low or Medium Cost bucket. These are the listings where co-buying either pays less per bedroom than the local rent equivalent or sits close enough that ownership economics — equity, tax treatment, and insulation from rent inflation — become the obvious choice.

The multifamily edge

Pulling apart the bucket distribution by property type produces the single clearest result in the dataset:

Almost three-quarters of the multifamily stock in our active shortlist beats or roughly matches local rent on a per-bed basis. About a third of single-family stock does.

Multifamily property median list price runs higher in absolute terms ($1,069,500 vs. $799,000 for single-family) but the cost-per-bed is meaningfully lower ($1,331/bed/month vs. $1,517/bed/month). Bigger buildings hold more bedrooms, fixed costs spread further, and the all-in monthly cost per resident comes down. This is the case for going multifamily by design.

Cost-per-bed by bedroom count

The pattern continues across bedroom count. Larger properties produce lower cost-per-bed:

A four-buyer group looking at a four-bedroom property pays more per person than a six-buyer group looking at a six-bedroom property of comparable quality, because fixed costs (taxes, insurance, common-area maintenance) get split more ways. Group size and bedroom count are levers on the math.

Where Low Cost properties cluster

The towns producing the most Low Cost listings in the current shortlist are not all the towns most readers expect:

Boston's number deserves a closer look. With 19 Low Cost listings out of 49 benchmarked Boston properties, the city outperforms the popular narrative that Greater Boston is uniformly priced out of co-buying economics. The Low Cost listings concentrate in Brighton, Allston, Dorchester, Mattapan, Hyde Park, and Roxbury. The triple-decker stock is doing the work.

Lowell, Worcester, Springfield, Chicopee, Fall River, New Bedford, and Brockton round out the markets where co-buying math works most consistently. Per-person monthly cost of ownership in these markets reliably lands below per-person rent, often by $300 a month or more.

Greater Boston proper runs different math. In Cambridge, Newton, Brookline, Wellesley, and similar high-demand towns, co-buying rarely lands in the Low Cost bucket. It frequently lands in Medium Cost. The argument for ownership in those markets is not "cheaper than rent in month one." It's "cheaper than rent over five years," once rent escalation, equity build, and tax treatment are factored in.

Buying power scales with the group

A solo borrower earning $96,000 (the Massachusetts median household income) can typically qualify for a mortgage in the $400,000 to $450,000 range at current rates. That buys nothing in Greater Boston. A co-buying group of four earning the same per person scales the qualifying loan to roughly $1.6 million to $1.8 million. The same group buys a multifamily in any of the neighborhoods that produced the Low Cost cluster above.

This is the arithmetic underneath the entire model:

Two case studies

How the data feeds property selection

The dataset feeds two things. It feeds the property scoring tool we use with our groups, which combines cost-bucket performance with bed-to-bath ratio, multifamily versus single-family, square feet per bed, lot per bed, school rating, and crime rating into a single weighted score:

The weighted score produces a ranked list. The same scoring framework feeds the longer arc of this report: the right co-buying property is the one that performs in the bucket and on the criteria the group's plan calls for.

We make summary versions of the underlying data available to partners and groups working through our pipeline. Citation note: the figures here can be cited as Restored Living Property Index, March 2026 cut.[14]

8. Common failure modes

The hardest part of co-buying is not on the list below. It's the confusion at the start. The what-ifs pile up. What if someone wants out? What if we disagree on a repair? What if the relationship goes sideways? What if a job moves out of state? Most of these have answers. None of them get answered if the group never starts. The default move, when the questions feel overwhelming, is to retreat to the system everyone already knows: another year of renting, or saving alone for the down payment that never quite arrives.

A useful framing: yes, co-buying requires real thought and a written agreement. It is a meaningful decision and deserves to be treated as one. Compared to the alternatives, though, it is asking for less than people assume. Renting indefinitely guarantees no equity, rising costs, and total exposure to a landlord's decisions. Solo ownership at Massachusetts prices is closed to most people in their twenties and thirties, and produces a far heavier financial commitment for the people who do qualify than a co-buying share would. Co-buying, with the right agreement, is the lightest of the three.

The actual operational risks are smaller than the hesitation suggests. Below are the ones that matter, with the right answer for each.

Misalignment on horizon

The single most common cause of co-ownership conflict is not disagreement about the property. It's disagreement about how long anyone planned to be in it.

The fix is the agreement. Each group should agree, before closing, on a default ownership horizon and on the conditions under which the horizon can be extended (typically unanimous consent) or shortened (typically with a defined buyout mechanism). Groups that align on this in writing have an answer when life changes. Groups that don't, don't.

One owner wants out

Three paths handle this. Each group should pick one before closing.

Path one: the remaining owners buy out the departing owner's share. Workable if the remaining owners can finance the buyout. On a TIC, this often requires a refinance.

Path two: the departing owner finds a buyer for their share, subject to approval by the remaining owners. The remaining group keeps the property. The agreement should narrow the approval criteria so it cannot be used to block legitimate replacements.

Path three: the group sells the entire property and divides proceeds. Cleanest, but disruptive for owners who wanted to stay.

How to value the share

The hardest part of any buyout is determining what the share is actually worth. Our recommended approach is straightforward. Start with the equity the departing owner has built through mortgage payments. That is a verifiable, factual number: original ownership share multiplied by the principal paid down to date. If the property has been held for three or more years, it is reasonable to add a conservative appreciation factor based on comparable sales in the immediate area. Use that as the guiding price.

The figure is a starting point, not a binding number. Someone still has to be willing to pay it. In a soft market, the buyout amount may need to come down. In a strong market, the figure may be conservative. The agreement should specify the calculation method, name the appraiser if appraisal is required, and set the timeline for payment.

Disagreement on operations

Maintenance reserve funding. Decision thresholds for unanimous versus majority. Adding new owners. Lease policy on rented units. The fix is to set these in writing before they're contested. A good co-ownership agreement covers each.

Refinancing complications

If one owner has a credit event during a refinance window, the refinance can stall, taking everyone's rate exposure with it. The agreement should address what happens if a refinance becomes necessary and one party cannot qualify, including provisions for substitution, voluntary share reduction, or temporary lender pause.

Death, divorce, incapacity

These are not abstract. The agreement should specify whether ownership passes by the operating agreement or by the operating agreement subject to estate law. It should name a decision-maker if one party becomes incapacitated. It should narrow what happens to a share that becomes part of a divorce proceeding. Standard provisions exist for all of this. Groups that skip them invent them under stress.

Why none of this should stop a group

None of the above is unique to co-buying. Every shared property arrangement, including marriage and inheritance, eventually faces these moments. The advantage of co-buying with friends, family, or aligned partners who have agreed to a written framework is that the framework was written when no one was upset. Almost everything that goes wrong has a contractual answer. The mistake is delaying the contract and defaulting back to the systems that were already failing the group when they started looking for an alternative.

9. What we've learned operating in this space

A handful of observations show up repeatedly in our work with co-buyers.

The financial gap between renting and owning a multifamily as a group is real and has been understated. The mainstream housing conversation tends to compare a single-family home to a single household's rent. That comparison has been hopeless for first-time buyers in Massachusetts for years. The comparison that actually matters — a 3-to-6 bedroom multifamily to the equivalent number of rented bedrooms in the same town — looks meaningfully different. Roughly half the benchmarked properties in our active shortlist sit in cost buckets that beat or substantially match local rent per bedroom.

The entry point is also more approachable than most people assume. The median down payment per bedroom on properties in our Low and Medium Cost buckets is $35,300. A 25-year-old contributing that amount, rather than the $130,000 needed to put 20% down on a median Greater Boston single-family alone, is on a different curve.

The model is showing real promise as a response to two emerging crises that are usually treated separately. Older adults co-buying a multifamily with peers, or with adult children's households, address isolation and fixed-income housing cost in one arrangement. The Surgeon General's loneliness advisory and the state's projected growth in 75-and-over households are pointing at the same problem from different angles. Co-buying is one of the few existing housing models that responds to both at once.

Healthcare and home are converging. As more health services move into the home — from telemedicine to caregiving to monitoring — the economics of those services improve when they can be shared across a household of multiple residents rather than installed and staffed individually. We are watching this space and expect it to change how groups think about property selection over the next few years.

The current generation of would-be first-time buyers has been told the math is broken. The math is not broken. The model has been wrong. Co-buying is a return to a way of holding property that fits the housing stock, fits the demographics, and fits the financial reality that solo ownership has stopped working at this price level.

10. Where we're going

A handful of groups are working through co-buying transactions with us right now, each on a different track. We expect to publish a series of case studies in the next edition of this guide, every one with a slightly different approach to the model: real numbers, real outcomes, and the lessons that came out of each. We are also working toward a published partner list of lenders, attorneys, and contractors with active experience in co-buying transactions. The version of this guide that runs in early 2027 should have all of it.

The Healthy Home Index

The Healthy Home Index is in development and discovery. With multiple people in a single home, money stretches further, and that stretch creates room to invest in things conventional housing has historically underinvested in: natural light, indoor air quality, ventilation, outdoor access, noise levels, and how a layout supports both privacy and shared living. The relationship between a home's physical characteristics and the health of the people living in it is one of the most under-investigated territories in housing.

Co-buying creates conditions where this kind of work makes sense. Multiple residents share a vested interest in the home performing well across their daily lives. The framework applies equally to any shared living environment. It lands hardest in co-buying because the residents are also the owners, and the investment compounds.

Development and the longer arc

The on-market story is one half of the picture. The other is what becomes possible when groups commission new construction together. New construction designed for co-buying allows for better-built shared facilities, deliberately preserved land through cluster development rather than the suburban sprawl pattern, and a different relationship between the people living in a property and the way it was built.

The conventional development model has the end users as the last party in the transaction, after investors, lenders, and developers have set their requirements. The co-buying development model has the end users as the investors. The implications are not small. Better materials, better systems, better integration with the surrounding land. Buildings designed to last across generations of resident ownership, not to maximize a five-year return for a passive holder.

We are not building this side of the business yet. We are watching it carefully and identifying the partners, the financing structures, and the early projects that will make it possible.

11. FAQ

Is co-buying legal in Massachusetts?

Yes. Tenancy in Common, LLC ownership, and cooperative ownership are all standard, established forms under Massachusetts law. The mechanics are well-defined.

How many people can co-buy a home?

There is no legal upper limit. We work most often with groups of three to six. Larger groups (eight to twenty residents) are workable and frequently use cooperative formation.

Do we all need to be friends?

No. The right alignment matters more than friendship. The strongest co-buying groups we have seen are aligned on finances, timeline, and lifestyle expectations, and respectful of one another's space. Familiarity helps. It is not the threshold.

What credit score do I need?

The lender uses the lowest credit score in the group as the qualifying score. A score in the 680s typically gets the group reasonable terms. Below that, expect rate impact. Strong income from other group members partially offsets weak credit, but does not eliminate the rate effect.

What's the difference between TIC, LLC, and cooperative ownership?

TIC: each owner holds a percentage of the property directly. Best for owner-occupants seeking the lowest cost of capital. Less flexible on transfers.

LLC: the LLC owns the property; owners hold membership interests. More flexible on transfers, slightly higher rate, $560/year filing fee, better for groups with investors or liability concerns.

Cooperative: a corporation owns the property; owners hold shares and a proprietary lease. Best for long-term, mission-aligned groups. Most complex to set up. Lender appetite is the constraint.

See Section 5 for the full comparison.

What happens if one of us wants to leave?

The agreement governs this. The standard paths are: remaining owners buy out the departing share, the departing owner finds a replacement subject to group approval, or the group sells the property entirely. Each group picks the default before closing. See Section 8 for valuation guidance.

Can I rent out my share?

In a TIC, yes, by agreement. In an LLC, the LLC can lease units the operating agreement permits. In a cooperative, subletting is governed by the bylaws and is usually limited.

Can I co-buy a 2-to-4 unit property?

Yes. Multifamily properties (two-, three-, and four-unit) are well-suited to co-buying. Each owner can occupy a separate unit, the property qualifies for owner-occupied financing if at least one borrower lives in one of the units, and exit through condo conversion is well-established in Massachusetts.

Does co-buying affect my taxes?

Each TIC co-owner deducts their share of mortgage interest and property tax based on their ownership percentage and what they actually paid. LLC and cooperative members have different tax treatment governed by the entity. Confirm with an accountant.

What if my co-buyer stops paying their share?

In a TIC, the lender does not care which co-owner pays; the loan is in default if the full payment isn't made. The remaining owners typically need to cover the gap to protect their credit, then pursue the non-paying owner under the agreement. In an LLC, the entity covers the loan, and the operating agreement governs how internal contribution disputes are handled.

Do I need a real estate attorney?

Yes. Every co-buying group should have a Massachusetts real estate attorney review or draft the co-ownership agreement, the operating agreement, or the bylaws, depending on form. We work with several and can introduce.

Can I refinance later?

Yes. Refinancing a co-buying property is mechanically the same as refinancing any property, with the added requirement that all owners on title sign. Refinancing is the typical mechanism for buying out a departing owner in a TIC.

What's the Boston Co-Purchasing Pilot?

A City of Boston program offering up to $50,000 per qualifying household as a zero-percent deferred loan to support co-purchasing transactions in Boston. See Section 6.

Can I see your data?

We share summary versions of the property analysis with partners and active groups. Reach out and we'll set you up.

12. Methodology and sources

Property data

We pull on-market sales and rental data across Massachusetts on a rolling basis. The most recent full pass referenced in this report covers 18,767 sale listings settled between January 2025 and February 2026, with bedroom counts of 3 to 7, across 325 Massachusetts towns and cities. The active shortlist of 388 properties referenced in Section 7 is a current snapshot of on-market listings filtered for co-buying suitability.

Financing assumptions

All monthly cost calculations in this report use:

• 6.5% interest rate
• 30-year term
• 20% down payment
• Property tax: 1.15% of value annually (state effective rate baseline)
• Insurance: approximately 0.5% of value annually
• Maintenance reserve: a function of bedroom count, sized to roughly 1% of value annually
• Utilities baseline: $400/month allocation

These assumptions are held constant across the dataset for comparability. Individual properties and groups will vary; the figures represent a consistent benchmark, not a quote.

Cost bucket definition

Each property with a town-and-bedroom rent benchmark is assigned a cost bucket:

• Low Cost: monthly cost-per-bed at or below the town's median rent-per-bed at the same bedroom count.
• Medium Cost: monthly cost-per-bed between the town median rent-per-bed and 1.25× that figure.
• High Cost: monthly cost-per-bed above 1.25× the town median rent-per-bed.
• No Benchmark: properties in towns or bedroom counts where rental data is too thin to compute a reliable median.

Of the 388-property shortlist, 304 (78%) carry a benchmark. Bucket distribution applies only to benchmarked properties.

Scoring

Property scoring combines nine weighted criteria (see Section 7 for the table). Scores are normalized within the active shortlist and produce a single ranked list.

Cited sources

1. [1] The Warren Group. "MA Median Home Sale Price Reaches $638K in 2025." January 2026.
2. [2] Guthrie Schofield Group. "Massachusetts Real Estate Market Report 2025–2026." Greater Boston median of $800,000, October 2025.
3. [3] CRE Daily. "Massachusetts Needs 222K Housing Units by 2035." December 2025. Home prices up 73% since 2000; household income up 4% inflation-adjusted.
4. [4] National Low Income Housing Coalition. "2026 Massachusetts Housing Profile." March 2026. $95,476 annual income required for two-bedroom FMR.
5. [5] WBUR / Boston Foundation. "Greater Boston Housing Report Card 2025." November 2025.
6. [6] Governor Healey Administration / Executive Office of Housing and Livable Communities. "A Home for Everyone: Comprehensive Housing Plan for Massachusetts." February 2025.
7. [7] Worcester Business Journal / U.S. Data Labs. "Despite 90K Units Added, Mass. Falls Behind Nation in Housing Production." September 2025.
8. [8] U.S. Surgeon General. "Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation." Advisory, 2023.
9. [9] American Psychiatric Association. "New APA Poll: One in Three Americans Feels Lonely Every Week." January 2024.
10. [10] American Psychological Association. "APA Poll Reveals a Nation Suffering from Stress of Societal Division, Loneliness." November 2025.
11. [11] Boston Globe / Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. "Greater Boston Housing Costs Create Generation of Forever Renters." December 2025.
12. [12] Point2Homes / U.S. Census ACS. Boston demographics.
13. [13] Apartment List / Zillow. Boston median one-bedroom rent, 2025.
14. [14] Restored Living Property Index, March 2026 cut. Internal analysis. Available to partners on request.

13. Working with us

This guide is a reference. It is also an invitation.

If you are a prospective co-buyer in Massachusetts, the most useful next step is a free profile in our Hub. The questionnaire generates a personalized buying-power assessment and matches you against active properties and active groups in our pipeline.

If you are a lender, attorney, accountant, contractor, or other professional with experience relevant to co-buying transactions, we want to work with you. The model needs more practitioners. Contact us.

If you are a researcher, journalist, policymaker, or municipal official working on housing affordability or co-purchasing programs, we share data and findings on request, and we are happy to talk through what we have learned. The 2026 edition is our first public attempt at a comprehensive picture. The 2027 edition will be better with input from the field. We are inviting collaboration as much as we are inviting customers.

There are very few problems in the country right now that respond to a real fix as cleanly as housing affordability responds to co-buying. We are doing this work because we believe it can move the model from alternative to obvious, and because we think the time to do it is now.