Discussion keeps the world'sturning.
This isRoundtable. Helloeverybody, welcome toRoundtable, coming to you fromBeijing.
I'mHuayang, good to have you joinus.
On a day'sshow, imagine a future where your best friend isn't just yourconfident, but your co-homeowner.
Sound a bitfar-fetched?
While buying a home with friends is already a growing trend in theUS, it forces folks to rethink what it means to build a life and ahome.
So perk up your years or betteryet, call that friend you've always dreamed of living next doorto, because we're about to explore the rise of friendship as a possible new cornerstone oflife.
And as a collegestudent, would you ever wish your parents could see yourgrades, or would you cherish that newfound independence andprivacy?
For today'sprogram, I'm joined by Dingheng and Steve Hatherley in thestudio.
First on a day'sshow. Friendships are often considered less important than romantic and marital relationships to somefolks.
Notothers. More Americans are challenging the statusquo, placing friendship at the heart of their lives and financialdecisions.
A recent US survey reveals a surprisingtrend.
Every15% of respondents have already co-purchased a home with someone other than a romanticpartner.
Even moreintriguing, almost half of those surveys said they'd considerit.
This isn't just about splitting themortgage.
It may well be a seismic shift in how we viewfriendship, challenging long-held assumptions aboutrelationships, homeownership, and financial decisionmaking.
So tell us about Americans co-purchasing homes with non-romanticpartners, such as friends or familymembers.
And what do the numbers say in thissurvey,Dingheng?
Yeah, so this is a survey done by an American financial institution calledJ.
Davlow ShortyBounds. It has surveyed more than 1000Americans.
And here are some of the maintakeaways.
Most of the15% of the respondents have already co-purchased a home with a person other than their romanticpartner.
And another48% say they would considerit.
And60% of the respondents would have co-purchased a home with a friend with JanZ, namely the generation born after1995.
In the most willing agecohort, we're talking about70% of the American Jan Zhere.
This generation is the most interested in terms of co-buying a home for a personalresidence.
While in the case of those oldergenerations, they are more interested in doing so as a kind of opportunity forinvestment.
And also some25% of the respondents who co-purchased a home with a non-romantic partner said they could not afford the purchase alone in the firstplace.
And also there are other findings like when they were asked who would you prefer to co-buywith,61% saidfriends,57% saidsiblings, and49% saidpower-ins.
So it gives you a lot ofperspective.
It'sinteresting, isn'tit?
When we think about buying ahome, it's something that transcendsculture.
Young people in Canada dream of buying a home as do youngAmericans, as do young Japanese and young Brits and youngChinese, I'msure.
So when we think about this is changing now in the sense that you don't want to buy a house by yourself or you don't want to buy a house with your romanticpartner, maybe I shouldrephrase.
Not you don't wantto. You're looking at more feasible ways to make this a possibility in yourlife.
Perhaps the Gen Zs are the smartest ones so far of the previous generations because when you look at the numbers and how this breaks down and I'll use Canada as an example in just amoment, it does make a lot more financial sense to do this with a family member or with a friend or someone that you can trust in yourlife.
It's a fascinating new trend and it's something that I've never even heard ofbefore.
Ohreally? And I haven't necessarily heard ofthis, at least not for this earlier stage in life inChina.
When I looked up theinternet, much of this discussion about co-ownership of a home with somebody that's not related to you or a romantic partner is usually discussions about retirement because now in ourcountry, we've seen that there's a rising number of people who might not be married and then might not have kids or you have kids living faraway, then what do you do when you get old and then people talk about maybe it can live with my bestfriend?
Those kind ofthings. But when you're young and strong and when you feel you're omnipotent that you can pay off a 30 year mortgageloan, already you're settling in with a friend or your friend and family aswell, this is definitely a newconcept.
But investment was the key word sofar, Ithink,right?
Property is one of the safestinvestments, isn't that what they always say when you hear about a financialadvice?
This isn't strictly an American thing aswell.
I found that inAustralia, they did some research there and they found that40% of young Australians are considering buying a property with someone other than a romanticpartner, so this is happening inAustralia.
And like Isaid, it's happening in Canadatoo.
Let's have a closer look at exactly how this broke down inCanada.
They did a recent study from a real estate agency called Royal LaPage and they found that6% of Canadian homeowners co-owned their property with anotherparty.
That other party is not their spouse or their significantother.
Inside that6%,89% co-owned with familymembers, maybe not so surprising and7% withfriends.
The numbers don't seem to be as high as they are in the UnitedStates, but it still exists in Canada and it still exists in Australiatoo.
Andguys, have you ever considered co-purchasing a home with a non-romantic partner such as a friend or familymember?
Until today'sdiscussion, this very idea was really beyond my wildgas, my wildestimagination.
Butnow?Yeah, now because I already own aproperty.
And you're happily married andso?
Yeah,yeah,yeah. Maybe that's beyond my personaloption.
But I would say here inChina, this is yet to become a socialnorm.
I have never heard of cases regarding co-purchasing or co-ownership betweenfriends.
Ofcourse, in manycases, because earlier in the survey of theAmericans, they mentioned about parental involvement aswell.
I guess here inChina, in manycases, parents areinvolved.
But I would say more often thannot, Chinese parents are very helpful and in a meantime selfless in thisregard.
Would that be because the money gets passed down from generation togeneration?
Yeah. When I say themoney, Imean, the money to help out with a newhome.
So for these young children who are considering buying a home with their romantic partner inChina, they'll use that money for theirhome.
And then if they havechildren, they'll pass that money on tothem.
That's what I mean by passing itdown.
Would that be a common thing to happen here inChina?
Yeah, I think that's actually inChina.
Most of this narrow is like your parents already on ahome.
And if their kids reach a stage of stability or marriage where they need to buy ahome, for theirmarriage, maybe their parents would directly transfer the ownership of the property to their kids or they will sell their property in exchange for money and then give this money as a kind of financial support to theirkids.
But the property to be bought will be fully owned by theirkids.
So that's why I said earlier that Chinese parents are in many ways selfless in thisregard.
And also for ourgenerations, so many members of the millennial generation as well as the older Gen Zgeneration, a lot of us are the single child of thefamily.
And therefore there's maybe less dispute when it comes to the transfer of property as well as inheritance in thatsense.
Andwell, I'd still like to throw the same question toyou,Steve.
Have you heard ofthis? Would you ever consider buying property with friends and not your romanticpartner?
Like Isaid, this is a totally new concept to me and I was thinking why has this become atrend?
Right? So I looked into it andagain, I'll go to Canada as theexample.
And I just looked up property prices in different provinces across thecountry.
So in BritishColumbia, that's the Western most province where you findVancouver.
The average price of a home in May of 2024 was over $1million.
Now if you're a young Canadianperson, you probably don't have $1 million to buy a newhome.
But even qualifying for amortgage, then you're still going to have to put down about 5 to10%.
That's what they say inCanada, which would be $5,000to $100,000, which is still a tremendous amount of money for a youngperson.
But what if you were to divide that between yourself and a trustedfriend,right?
Outside of your romanticrelationships, just a good buddy ofyours.
That million dollarhome, all of a sudden becomes somewhat feasible financiallyspeaking.
And that's the most expensive example that I gaveyou.
If you look at NovaScotia, where I'mfrom, the average home price for May of 2024 was$460,000.
Soagain, if that's 5 to10% to put down on amortgage, then that's only $46,000 if it's10%, maybe $23,000 if it's5%.
And then if you divide that intwo, then that's $10,500 each or $11,000 each between you and your friend to purchase a home for a quality investment for yourfuture.
This suddenly to me seems like a pretty smart and a pretty goodidea.
Also, I have a questionhere,though, because every time I go to thebank, especially when I need to speak to a financialadvisor, especially when you're having this big mission to come in and negotiate the mortgage assuch, it's a dauntingtask.
And if you go in as a singleperson, you get a certainrate.
When you go in as a marriedcouple, you get a differentrate.
And thenalso, it's assumedthat,oh, you two aremarried, then it's two people who are going to pay forthis.
Andthen,well, no wonder you might get a more generous rate oroffering.
But when you go in with thefriend, does the banker even recognize what you're doinghere?
And then I wonder if we're getting a good dealpossible.
That's one of the potential difficulties orhardships.
And I think there are many more difficulties or hardships if we dig a little deeper if we think about this a littlemore.
Yeah, because I guess many financial institutions were often trained longs or dads differently for now marriedco-buyers.
Forexample, I guess banks may view the entire mortgage dad as the responsibility of eachindividual, if we are talking about a scenario in which two friends are applying for this loan rather than splitting it as they would afford a marriedcouple.
So was that inmind, I think that could really have an impact on your future ability to secure additional loans orcredit?
This is a realistic issue to thinkabout.
Andalso, like there are some legalissues.
How do you divide thisproperty, the division of thisproperty?
Yeah, what happens if you have a fallingout?
What's yourfriend? What if the relationship goessour?
What happensthen? And you make a good point about from the bank'sperspective, this loan belongs to the both of you infull.
So if one person suddenly disappears or decides they don't want to be a part of this problemanymore, then you're left holding thebag, so tospeak, the financialresponsibility.
And also unwinding from a marriage could be messyenough.
Winding for this kind of friendship that is so fuzzy that doesn't really have existing legal framework to protect the rights of bothsides, then it's unknownterritory.
Imean, I know plenty of friends who have started businesses with theirfriends.
And this is kind of along the sameidea, isn'tit?
Entering into a financial relationshiptogether.
And those people that I was just speakingabout, they had a fallingout.
And the business didn't end up goingwell.
One person had certain ideas about what they wanted to do with the business and the other person had otherideas.
So what happens if that happens in thissituation, then it's kind of the same concept that the relationship could go sour and then what happens with thecreditors, with thebanks, with all theresponsibilities.
Right. So I just kind of messed up the internet and didn't find a lot in the Chinese speakingworld.
But there are legal advices given for they don't necessarily call this aco-ownership.
But something along the lines of sharing responsibility with a friend and then what the advice tend to be is employ alawyer, have bespoke contracts written foryou.
Buttherefore, it's a little bit morecomplicated.
You have legalfees. You also need to pay for to make thishappen.
But because the three ofus, I guess we're kind of all new to this concept and we can see so many of the sort of downsides ofit.
But it's still so fascinating that so many more Americans are taking up thisplan.
And I came across thisbook, The Other SignificantOthers, Reimagining Life with Friendship at the Center and theauthor, RhinaCohen, who's also a MPRjournalist, saidthis, buying a hometogether, raising kidstogether, taking care of each other through sickness andillness.
That's all happening even if it's hidden in plainsight.
And then she's actually engaged in this kind ofarrangement.
And if you can sort of get the legality side of thingssettled, like yousaid,Steve, you have a pretty obvious financial objective that makes sensehere.
Then with all the other things I justlisted, it might sound like a pretty goodplan.
Yeah. And I think it might be not just a pretty goodplan, but a necessaryplan.
Youknow, in order to buy a home in the United States in2023, the average household income necessary to buy a house wasover $100,000.
Itwas $107,000. Now what 25-year-oldmakes?
I wish I made $107,000 when I was 25 yearsold.
So if you need that much money to buy ahouse, if you need to make that muchsalary-wise, it's just not something that's probably possible for a lot of youngpeople.
Just to make this a little bit more comprehensible for our Chineselisteners, respondents who co-purchased the home with a non-romantic partner in the American survey invested on average close to $90,000 or morethan $650,000.
And that's a lot ofmoney.
It's a lot ofmoney. That's real investment into your shared future with thefriend.
Itis. Like I saidbefore, it's one of the safest investments theysay.
Ofcourse,housing, bubbles burst and things likethis.
We've seen evidence ofthat, ofcourse,2008,2009.
But what I'm saying is for a young person in their20s, in their early30s, to make this kind ofdecision, financialdecision, to protect theirfuture, I kind of likeit.
And the more we talk aboutit, the more I'm attracted to theidea.
Yeah. And let's not underestimate the value of friendship because sometimes friendship is often described as a kind of peripheral relationship for somepeople, actually for a lot ofpeople.
But what you can really be finding with people who have reallystretched, what you think of as possible forfriendship, really treating a friend as a livepartner.
You raise kids together that is just asgrounding, ascommitted, and contributes as much to your life as we have been told that only aromantic, a so-calledfamily, a romantic relationship is able todo.
Yeah, that'spotential.
That's potentiallyfeasible.
Yes,indeed.Actually,also, I wouldwonder, has this something to do just with the reality that we're livingin?
Because when you look atAmericans, Chinesepeople, the younger generation are getting married much later and possibly maybenever.
Or we'll see whathappens.
Andtherefore, if you don't have that romantic partner at your side to go to the bank with you and sign thisdeal, then who's the second best inline?
Well, maybeparents. Or maybe this friend who have been with you through thickened thin for maybe the 30 years that you've lived in thisworld.
You talk about average marriage age in the United Statesaround, between the 1950s and1960s, it was around2021, 22 yearsold, fast forward to2023.
That's 30.2 yearsold. And that number has consistently been rising since the 1950s and60s.
So if that trendcontinues, then it's going to be31,32,33, 34 over the next decades tofollow.
That means that people are getting marriedlater.
I think we've probably talked a lot about the fact that people in many countries around the world are choosing to focus on themselves and theircareers, but they still want to have thatprotection, that financial protection in thefuture.
And whoknows? Maybe it's easier to co-own a home with a friend than it is with a romanticpartner.
Because all of thosefeelings, all of those relationship potentialproblems, if the marriage doesn't gowell, all of that's removed and it's simply strictly a businessdecision.
Intheory, maybe it canbe, but for any relationship to go thatdeep, I feel dissolving any important relationship that goes so deep into your heart andlife, you're living with this person and co-owningproperty, which is possibly the biggest and most expensive asset for mostpeople.
And it could be earth shattering when it goessouth.
It absolutelyshould. Orcould.
With the emotional investment you put into a relationship to be that close withsomeone, I feel it's going to be difficult just to keep it as a businessproposition.
But we're assuming we're making the assumption that these co-house owners are going to live in the hometogether.
Maybe that's not always thecase.
Maybe they purchase thehome, renovate thehome, and then rent it out to otherpeople.
That might make it even more of a business than simply living together with your buddy and sharing the responsibilities of who's going to clean the bathroom on Tuesday and who's going to take out the garbage onThursday.
That sounds like aviable, maybe investment plan for the secondhome.
But for most of the young people who are getting into this or who like thisidea, they want this to be their primaryresidence.
Therefore everhome.Yeah.
And for the older folks in the Americansurvey, theysay,oh, youknow, this is forinvestment.
But also when you guys mentioned that there's a possible generation shift that GenZ, those born between 1997 to2012.
2012,right?Yeah. So for them to be onboard, somesay,oh, because society'schanged, youknow, there's generation-nosedshift.
I wonder is it because really society has changed that much or maybe because they'reyoung.
You don't knowbetter. Youknow, Imean, there are still sort of not really putting their roots downyet.
And they're looking at this in a different light as opposed to those in their 30s or approaching 40s assuch.
So what do you think aboutthat?
A couple of different groups of people we might be talking abouthere.
I think digitalnomads, we know thatterm,right?
People who have decided to not live in the United States and pick up and move to another country around the world because it's moreaffordable,housing-wise, and they can work fromanywhere.
I don't think that's who we're talking abouthere, or at least it doesn't seem like that's who we're talkingabout.
Seems like the group that would be interested in this is the group that's interested in planting roots in America and setting up their long term homethere.
So I think the interesting thing about the United States is that there's all different types of groups of people who are making all different types of different decisions about what they want to do with theirlife.
And this is just one of the new decisions that seems to beemerging.
Yeah, maybe in a society that is outside the UnitedStates, there could be more cases like misunderstanding or stigma because society often tends to view friendship as less significance than a romanticrelationship, forexample.
So I guess if we're talking about people who are really prioritizingfriendship, they may face not necessarilycriticism, but scrutiny about or misunderstanding is that real friendship or is there something hidden behind the so-calledfriendship?
The socialstigma.Yeah.
A lot of here say wildgas, which could create problems for the individuals involvedhere.
I'll just imagine if you could be co-owning this property withsomeone, then you're probably going to live in a place twice asnice, twice as big as what you're innow.
And thenalso,again, I bring up the later stages oflife, especially when one is near retirement or yourolder.
That's when we really needassistance.
When you'reyounger, you feel like yourbulletproof.
You can do all this kind ofstuff, having somebody by your side is anuisance.
But when you're old and if you're not married or you don't have close people aroundyou, that's when I think joininghands, having somebody in the next room is reallynice.
And what if you slip and fall or somethinghappens?
And you have somebody there and that you're not in that singlehousehold.
And then we've heard of these really drastic stories of people passing away and not being found out until muchlater.
And then with those things inmind, I feel this co-home ownership thing could have a lot more meaningful purpose for thisscenario.
The intangiblethings, what you're talking aboutthere, the extra benefits that come along withit.
Andalso, if this is your only shot to get on this propertyladder, whynot?
Why not takeit?Yeah,exactly.
And we'll deal with thelegal,social, other ramificationslater.
Coming upnext. Should universities keep parents in the loop forstudents, transcripts andgrades?
