[robear]

As an anecdote, my wife and I bought a place with friends because we couldn't afford on our own. People told us we were crazy. We basically bought the worst place in the city even with both families having good incomes (Vancouver). We had a five year plan to renovate the house and sell it. My wife and I didn't have a kitchen for a year. We cooked on a hot plate and washed dishes in the tub. Every time one of the houses around us was torn down, the mice would flee to our house until we plugged all the holes. Weekends and evenings were spent working on the house. We were lucky that the market continued to go up and that both couples were on the same page about everything. The house turned out quite nice. We have since gone our separate ways and each have our own place.

I love where we are now but I could have continued to live in the situation we were in longer. It was like family. We did lots of things together socially and we supported each other. Financially, it was the best thing both couples have done in their lives (again lucky the market continued to go up).

That's my sample size of one.

[pkulak]

You bought property in Vancouver 5 years ago. That's like saying you bought AAPL in 2004 with a bunch of friends and it worked out great. Well, it wasn't the friends part of the scheme that made it work out. ;D

[robear]

I get the tongue in cheekness of the comment with the ";D" but I think I qualified how lucky I feel several times and that it is an anecdote/sample size of one.

When we bought people thought it was the peak of the market and that is part of the people telling us it was crazy. We had no thoughts of the market continuing to go up when we bought. Our main focus was possibly making a bit on the renovations.

Even if the the market had gone down or sideways, and we didn't sell, I would have been fine with it. If we had lived there for the rest of our lives, I would have been fine with it. I liked the location and with the renovations, it was a great house.

It wasn't a get rich quick "scheme". Buying with friends was a way to buy a home. We were constantly being renovicted. We didn't have a place we felt was home. That house was home and buying with fiends was the only way it was possible.

[bonestamp2]

Buying with friends was probably still the riskier part of the equation though. Chances were pretty high the market was going to grow, or at least not decline. One marriage has a relatively high chance of failure, let alone two marriages plus the relationships between all four adults.

[JTbane]

Buying a fixer upper is still risky, not to mention buying it with friends and trusting them to not flake out on the deal.

[onlyrealcuzzo]

Do you think you would still be friends if instead of buying 5+ years ago, you bought 1 year ago, and you lost 20% on the house already -- wiping out your down payment?

[robear]

Good question. As I said in the response to a comment on my initial, we thought it was the peak when we bought. That may seem crazy now but people have been saying Vancouver was at a peak since the mid 2000s. So it was conceivable that it could have gone down. We knew it was a possibility.

It is hard to say though. You don't really know someone until you go through hardship together. My sense from knowing my friends would be yes we would be friends but I just can't say. We did go through some things in that time on personal fronts but it wasn't financial. Financial things can be different than others.

Our main focus was having a place of our own. We had the five year plan but as I said, I liked living where we were and with our friends. If it turned into a ten year plan or more, that would have been fine with me.

I think if we all kept our jobs, etc, things would be fine. If someone couldn't pay their side of the mortgage or something, that would have been more detrimental. Or if we had some sort of fight and were mid-renovation and had to try to finish the renovation not getting along or try to sell a half renovated house. Those things would have been pretty detrimental.