Miriam Belblidia loved her pale pink and blue house in New Orleans’ Holy Cross neighborhood. But in 2022, after seven years there, she decided she wanted to be closer to the action, a little further upriver in Faubourg Marigny.
At the time, Belblidia’s friends, Thom Smith and Claire Mehling, were renting half of a shotgun double in the Marigny when they learned the place was going up for sale, possibly putting their living situation in jeopardy.
The solution the three friends found to solve their twin challenges was once rare but has become more common: they pooled their money and bought the North Rampart Street house together, splitting the down payment and monthly mortgage in half.
With help from their real estate agent and title company, the three homebuyers all signed their names to the mortgage documents, taking shared ownership of the home — and they inked a “prenup” agreement of sorts that laid out ground rules that aren’t typical for a home loan.
When they closed their loan in May 2022, they were ahead of the curve of what has become a national trend.
In 2024, nearly 15% of homebuyers purchased their home with a friend or relative who wasn’t a romantic partner. Buying this way means each buyer pays only a percentage of the down payment and makes it easier to put down the 20% required to avoid private mortgage insurance, which could save hundreds of dollars a month.
Over time, having multiple buyers share the costs of maintenance, insurance and taxes can create significant savings, experts say.
“This was an incredible opportunity that fell in our laps,” Smith said. “We didn’t think we could ever afford to buy a historic house with all these great features in the heart of the action. We solved it by having ‘multiple unmarried persons’ on the mortgage, which is a hilarious phrase.”
Setting ground rules
Increasingly this decade, Millennial and Gen Z homebuyers have been eschewing the traditional path to equity common for Gen X, Boomers and previous generations: a married couple buys a house, paints the picket fence white and lives in it as a traditional family unit.
Instead, young buyers are getting married later, postponing kids and devising novel solutions to increased costs of living and wages that haven’t kept up with inflation. That means they are more open to nontraditional approaches to buying a home, still one of the most proven strategies for building long-term wealth.
In a region of the country where sky-high insurance premiums add to challenges for homebuyers, Belblidia, Smith and Mehling are among those learning the power of pooling resources.
Three years in, the North Rampart Street home ownership experiment is going well, the group says, in no small part due to careful planning and good communication.
Smith and Mehling, who got married in 2023, have “semi-regular meetings” with Belblidia to plan any repairs or discuss problems. They have a shared spreadsheet and an active group text thread to handle day-to-day issues. They have referred to their notarized co-ownership agreement from time to time. It covers big questions: Who’s responsible for maintenance? Who benefits from the increase in value if someone remodels a kitchen? What happens if one owner wants to sell?
“Anybody doing this will want to have everything in writing,” Belblidia said.
Like most owners of century-old New Orleans houses, the trio has had to spend thousands of dollars on upkeep over the last three years, including repairs to plumbing, exterior walls and the home’s foundation. They share responsibility for the property’s exterior and structural repairs but pay for interior renovations individually.
In some cases, they have decided not to split the cost three ways, but to recoup investments if and when the house is sold.
“We will cross that bridge when we get there,” Mehling said.
Smith, who was initially skeptical about the idea, said there were early challenges to getting the paperwork done because the system is largely designed for single homebuyers or romantic couples. Real estate agent Katie Witry, who has sold several houses to groups of friends, and Crescent Title helped make the deal happen.
Now, the three buyers have fallen into a rhythm that is both comfortable and comes with built-in advantages. They take care of each other’s pets, take turns scheduling and meeting with contractors and still enjoy socializing with one another.
“We see each other several times a week, coming and going at the same time, or hanging out in the backyard,” Smith said.
From L.A. to La.
A few miles upriver from the North Rampart Street house, another group of friends is nearly three years into co-ownership of a double shotgun near the corner of Napoleon Avenue and Magazine Street.
Judging by the festive atmosphere during a communal dinner earlier this week, the arrangement is paying off.
As one of the four homeowners chopped ingredients for chicken curry, others showed off the home’s new features, including a stylish new half bathroom, several pieces of restored furniture, and a custom-built pool out back surrounded by tropical foliage. On the kitchen floor, an oversized faux marble bust served as a conversation piece. Three well-behaved dogs enjoyed the commotion from beneath the kitchen island.
As the pandemic was winding down, the two couples —Ken and AC Kabukuru, and Brent and Julien Kyle-Rivière — decided to leave Los Angeles and make a new home base in New Orleans, using a job offer for Julien as an excuse to start over in a more affordable city.
“We always thought it would be a dream to get a place together but the prices in L.A. are high,” AC Kabukuru said. “We chose New Orleans because of its culture.”
The friends selected the Constantinople Street house for its floor plan and near-perfect “walkability score,” meaning it’s close to many restaurants, bars and stores. They wanted to live close to each other but to have some level of independence and, especially, to have their own kitchens.
What they didn’t do was sign any extra paperwork.
“We just put our names on the title,” AC said. “It’s not an inexpensive house, so the mortgage is real. If someone was not able to pay, it would be a problem, but we’ve known each other for so long that we trust each other.”
Now the friends joke about adding a passageway in the wall that separates their kitchens so it will be easier to share ingredients when they’re cooking on their own.
AC Kabukuru said that, overall, there have been far more pros than cons.
“It’s been smooth sailing so far,” she said.