What percentage of first home buyers buy with someone else?

About 60% of Australian first home buyers purchase with another person — a spouse, friend or family member — according to CommBank first home buyer data published in March 2026. Solo purchase is now the minority path.

How fast is co-buying with friends and family growing in Australia?

NAB lending data from October 2025 shows joint home loans among friends and family grew more than 33% in a year, with Victoria up 47%, South Australia up 37% and New South Wales up 34%.

Can friends buy a house together under the Home Guarantee Scheme?

Yes. Since 1 July 2023 friends and siblings can apply jointly under the Home Guarantee Scheme, provided every applicant is an eligible first home buyer. Two eligible buyers can purchase with a 5% deposit and no lenders mortgage insurance.

How many Australians would consider co-owning property?

The 2026 Victorian State of Living Index survey, as reported by Australian Broker, found 71% of respondents would consider co-ownership and 80% of people under 35 would consider buying with friends or family. These are stated intentions rather than completed purchases.

Australia · 5 min read · Josh Barton · 17 Aug 2026

Co-Buying Statistics: How Many Australians Buy Property Together? (2026)

Six in ten first home buyers now purchase with someone else, and joint loans between friends and family grew by a third in a year. Every co-buying figure in one place, each with its source and date.

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This article is general information only and is not legal, financial, tax, or property advice. Consider advice from a qualified professional for your circumstances.

The numbers at a glance

Co-buying (purchasing property with a partner, friend, sibling or parent) gets written about constantly and counted badly. Bank releases, surveys and loan data all measure slightly different things, so this page collects the credible Australian numbers in one place, each with its source and date, and says plainly what each one does and doesn't measure. Cite anything here with a link to its original source.

60% of first home buyers are purchasing with someone else — spouses, friends or family (CommBank first home buyer data, March 2026, drawn from 2021–2025 lending).
Joint home loans between friends and family members grew more than 33% in a year, led by Victoria (up 47%), South Australia (up 37%) and New South Wales (up 34%) (NAB lending data, October 2025).
71% of surveyed Victorians would consider co-ownership, and 80% of under-35s would consider buying with friends or family (2026 Victorian State of Living Index, as reported by Australian Broker, August 2026 — intentions survey, see the caveats below).
Households spanning three or more generations grew 21.8% between the 2016 and 2021 censuses (Australian Bureau of Statistics).
17% of first home buyers relied on parental deposit help in 2025, up from 11% in 2022 (Finder First Home Buyer Report 2025, survey of 1,006 buyers) — the family-money side of the same story, covered in depth in our Bank of Mum and Dad statistics page.
Since 1 July 2023, friends and siblings can apply jointly under the federal Home Guarantee Scheme — co-buying is now official housing policy, not a workaround (Housing Australia).

Six in ten first home buyers don't buy alone

The headline number comes from CommBank, Australia's biggest home lender, in March 2026: more than half (60%) of first home buyers are purchasing with someone else, "reflecting a growing willingness to buy with spouses, friends or family to achieve home ownership."

The same dataset sketches who these buyers are: the average first home buyer is now 33 years old, borrows about $480,000, puts down an average deposit of about 16% (down from the traditional 20% benchmark), and buys in a metropolitan area 73% of the time.

One honest caveat before you quote the 60%: it counts *any* joint purchase, and most joint purchases are still couples. What the figure establishes is that solo buying is now the minority path for first home buyers — the split between couples, friends and family inside that 60% is not published.

Friends and siblings are the fastest-growing slice

Where the couples-versus-friends split does show up is loan growth. NAB's lending data from October 2025 found joint home loans among friends and family members grew more than 33% in a single year — with Victoria up 47%, South Australia up 37% and New South Wales up 34%.

NAB's home lending executive Felix Sekulla put the driver simply: buying with someone you trust lets people "buy sooner, or buy in an area they might not be able to afford on their own."

Growth rates need their base: a 33% rise in a small category is thousands of loans, not hundreds of thousands. But direction and speed are the point — this is the fastest-growing corner of first home buying, and it's the one with the least established playbook. (If you're in that corner, start with how buying a house with a friend actually works in Australia.)

Most young Australians say they'd consider it

The 2026 Victorian State of Living Index survey, reported by Australian Broker in August 2026, found 71% of respondents would consider co-ownership, 80% of under-35s would consider buying with friends or family, and 57% would consider multigenerational living.

Treat these as what they are: stated intentions, not settlements. We haven't been able to locate the survey's methodology or sample size, so we cite it as reported. What makes the intention numbers worth keeping is that behaviour is moving the same way — the ABS counted a 21.8% rise in households of three or more generations between the 2016 and 2021 censuses, and the NAB loan growth above shows intentions converting into mortgages.

The deposit math driving all of it

None of this is a lifestyle trend. Domain's 2026 First Home Buyer Report puts the time to save a 20% deposit on an entry-level Sydney house at about 7 years and 7 months (entry price $1.15 million), and around five years nationally. Two incomes halve that. That's the whole pitch.

The alternative bridge is family money: 17% of 2025 first home buyers relied on parental help for their deposit, up from 11% in 2022, with the average parental gift at $74,040 (Mozo, 2025). Co-buying and the Bank of Mum and Dad are two answers to the same arithmetic — and they compound, since a parent who helps with a deposit often ends up a co-owner in practice if not on paper. (The full Bank of Mum and Dad numbers are here.)

Policy has caught up. Since 1 July 2023, friends and siblings can apply jointly under the Home Guarantee Scheme, which had been couples-and-singles only — two eligible first home buyers can get in on a 5% deposit with no lenders mortgage insurance. From 1 October 2025 the scheme's income caps and annual place limits were removed and price caps lifted, widening the door further.

What about the United States?

The pattern isn't only Australian. The National Association of Realtors' 2025 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers counted unmarried couples at 6% of all buyers and 11% of first-time buyers. US coverage of "co-buying with friends" runs ahead of the data — friend-and-sibling purchases aren't separately counted in the NAR profile — which is worth remembering when a headline claims a co-buying boom.

What none of these figures measure

Nobody publishes an official count of friend or sibling co-purchases in Australia. Bank figures cover only that bank's loan book; survey figures measure intentions or self-reported behaviour; the census counts households, not titles. The two numbers on this page with the firmest footing are the ABS census figure and the Home Guarantee Scheme rule change — everything else is a credible partial view, and we've labelled each one accordingly.

Using these figures

Journalists, brokers and researchers are welcome to cite this page; please attribute each figure to its original source (linked throughout) and link here for the compilation. Last compiled August 2026 — figures carry the year of their underlying data, not this page's publication date.

And if you're actually doing it rather than writing about it: the failure mode in co-buying isn't the mortgage, it's the missing paperwork — who owns what share, who pays what, and how someone gets out. Run your own numbers with the free co-buying calculators, and if you go ahead, Laddered keeps the shares, expenses and exit terms agreed and visible for as long as you own together.