Gen Z has found a way to buy a home Co-buying and co-housing as a response to a market that has become nearly impossible

Buying a home alone is increasingly less of a natural milestone of adulthood and more of a complex, delayed, and negotiated process. For decades, homeownership was framed as a linear path: education, work, mortgage, house, independence. Today, that trajectory has broken down. Not because young people no longer desire stability, but because the market has made it harder to achieve through individual means. According to Eurostat, in the fourth quarter of 2025, house prices in the European Union rose by 5.5% compared to the same period the previous year, while rents increased by 3.2%. Housing keeps becoming more expensive, while life paths grow more unstable.

It is within this fracture that models such as co-buying and co-housing are emerging. The former refers to the shared purchase of a property among people who do not necessarily follow the traditional couple model: friends, siblings, roommates, extended families, parents and children. The latter instead involves living arrangements where private spaces and shared services coexist: independent rooms or apartments, but also shared kitchens, laundries, coworking areas, gardens, children’s spaces, and social areas. In both cases, the traditional idea of ownership is redefined: no longer just individual possession, but access, use, management, and sharing.

Gen Z and housing: why more young people are choosing shared models

This is not a romantic revolution. It is first and foremost a pragmatic response. A study cited by NYU Urban Lab in 2025 found that around one third of Gen Z adults would be open to pooling resources with friends or family to buy a home, a higher share than previous generations. Homeownership has not disappeared from the imagination of young people, it has been restructured. If entering the market alone is no longer possible, the alternative is to do it together.

This is perhaps the most interesting aspect: co-buying does not eliminate the desire for ownership, it makes it collective out of necessity. For many young people, buying with someone else does not mean rejecting independence, but seeking a new form of autonomy within a market that has made individual autonomy too expensive. It is a generational paradox: to be independent, you need to share more. The home stops being a symbol of separation from others and becomes a structure of interdependence.

Housing crisis and new models: what is really changing

Across Europe, the issue has become central. A Youth Wiki report on young people’s access to affordable and quality housing highlights how housing is a fundamental condition for independence, mental and physical well-being, a sense of belonging, and the ability to build an autonomous life. Not having stable housing does not just mean paying too much: it means postponing choices, relationships, careers, families, and identities.

Co-housing enters here as a model that is more cultural than financial. It does not simply divide costs, but redefines the relationship between private and shared space. After years in which the home was conceived as an individual refuge, almost a defensive bubble, shared living brings back an older question: how much space does a person really need, and how much can be shared without losing freedom? Shared laundries, collective kitchens, study rooms, green areas, workshops, guest rooms: functions that once each home had to contain individually can become shared infrastructures. Fewer individual square meters, more shared services. Less ownership as accumulation, more home as an ecosystem.

Co-living between opportunity and risk: solution or compromise?

Naturally, there is also an ambiguous zone. The risk is that the language of sharing is transformed into premium real estate aesthetics: “community-driven” residences, small rooms, photogenic shared amenities, high rents, and sociality designed as a service. Co-living can become an intelligent response to urban loneliness, but also an elegant way to sell less space at a higher price. The difference lies in governance: who owns, who decides, who stays, who pays, who benefits from the value generated by the community.

For this reason, the issue is not simply about “living together”. It is about understanding whether these models truly open up possibilities or whether they become yet another individual adaptation to a market that does not change. If co-buying only serves to allow young people to take on debt together, it is not a revolution. If co-housing becomes just a cooler version of expensive rent, it is not an alternative. But if these models are supported by clear rules, cooperative structures, access to credit, legal protections, and housing policies, then they can become one of the most concrete ways to rethink ownership.

Why is buying a home becoming more difficult?

In this sense, Gen Z is not simply inventing a new lifestyle. It is responding to a structural problem with relational tools. Where the market demands increasingly high individual incomes, young people pool resources. Where ownership was designed for the nuclear family, new forms emerge: friendships, networks, non-linear families, temporary or permanent communities. Where independence once meant living alone, today it can mean living better together.