What is co-buying and is it the answer for millennials?

With the rapid rise in housing prices globally, growing numbers of aspirant homeowners are excluded from the property market as their salaries remain stagnant. Much has been written about the impact of this phenomenon on millennials in cities such as London, San Francisco, Johannesburg, and Cape Town. This is a pertinent issue for young Namibians too, as many find it increasingly difficult to gain their first foothold on the property ladder in the country’s housing market, which once recorded the second-highest house price growth in the world, second to Dubai.

One of the ways millennials have responded to the decline in the affordability of property is by abandoning the suburban lifestyles of their parents, rather than opting for smaller, inner-city apartments. An alternative for Namibia may lie in co-buying, where friends, for example, purchase a property by pooling their resources and living communally. This is ideal as there is no limit on the number of people who can be included in a single mortgage agreement (co-buyers each own a share of the title deed), opening up previously inaccessible options in the property market. While co-buying is a growing trend in the United Kingdom and closer to home in South Africa, it remains to be seen whether it will prove an attractive alternative for young Namibians.

For further information on how this works and what the pitfalls are, kindly contact Dr Weder, Kauta and Hoveka Inc for more information.