Home Affordability News: Boston’s New Co-Buying Experiment

Usually, when we hear the word multifamily, we’re hearing a financial buzzword. Investors buy multiple-unit homes to profit from renters.

But now in Boston, a multifamily housing concept lets hopeful first-time home buyers put their funds together, move on from rental situations, and get their own deeds.

Strength in Numbers

Mayor Michelle Wu’s 2025 State of the City Address revealed a plan to enhance access to property deeds in Boston: help them co-buy.

Why can’t they buy on their own? Here’s the thing. A household with Boston’s median income ($106K) can afford to finance a $500K home. But almost 90% of listed homes are priced over $500K.

This is where we are. The Boston market is frustrating even the people with six-figure incomes.

Mayor Wu explains that city residents suffer from “barriers for middle-income families, particularly those from historically marginalized communities.” How can people who need homes compete, in a market crowded by wealthy investors that see people as fodder for their own continued enrichment?  

So, Boston’s new Co-Purchasing Housing Pilot Program is meant to make hopeful buyers into a force to be reckoned with, as they find strength in numbers.  

Helpfully, Boston’s architecture lends itself to the idea. Many buildings have three floors, with residences on each one. Together, two or three families can buy a multi-condo building.   

Nuts and Bolts

Running the co-buying pilot program are two departments:

• Boston’s Housing Innovation Lab “tests new approaches to housing policy, programs, and design” for the purpose of increasing housing opportunities in the city.

• The Boston Home Center is part of the Mayor’s Office of Housing. Its mission is “Helping Boston residents buy, improve, and keep their homes.”

The Home Center will lend each of the co-buyers up to 5% of what they put in. The interest-free loans, meant to assist with down payments and closing costs, are forgivable.

And each applicant may choose their preferred lender to get a mortgage approval. They can go with government-backed (like FHA) or conventional (Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac) loans, or other loans if the city agrees. The lending partners include MEP Loans, Citizens Bank, Prime Lending, Salem Five Mortgage Company, and the NewFed Mortgage Group.

To sum it up: Applicants are first-time buyers who are willing to own together. All participants sign a co-ownership agreement. Applicants qualify individually for their loans. But they pool their financial resources to acquire their deeds.

The Leaders and Lenders

Jessica Ingram-Bee is a real estate agent (with Gibson Sotheby’s International Realty) and keen co-buying organizer. As a central coordinator of this project, Ingram-Bee points to the economic empowerment in co-buying, and how it literally brings people together to form communities. Ingram-Bee points to co-buyers who plan get-togethers and help maintain safety for each other’s children.

The lenders are strengthened, too. They forge ties with local households, and gain the goodwill of those they serve and those who read about their involvement. In a press release, leaders of the partner banks gave the following reasons for joining the collaboration:

• One financial leader expressed an interest in helping Boston households “obtain their dream of homeownership” and “promote more owner-occupied homes to families who might not have been able to afford them.”

• One praised the Mayor’s housing officials for the “creative way to generate more equity in the Boston real estate market.”

• One participant observed that plenty of households are ready and able to pay monthly mortgage costs. But home prices have risen so sharply that getting a down payment together is harder than it should be. These households just need an initial boost.

• One said Boston was once a city where multi-generational families would “live under one roof and split expenses” until the younger generations had saved up to strike out on their own. The co-buying initiative would “help bring those core values back to the city.”

Some financial folks paint quite the rosy gloss on the matter of fading affordability. But hey! They’re in.

Ingram-Bee helped the city create a guide for applicants to understand the lending, find additional resources, and decide if they should become participants.

Bridging the Gap

Boston’s new co-buying initiative could help lessen the racial wealth gap, in a nation where Black and Hispanic homeownership rates have struggled to reach 50%.

Some hopeful but struggling buyers seek out down payment assistance, but that’s typically hard to get because the income limits are so low. Usually, you have to be earning below 80% of the area median to get in. Many would-be deed holders make enough money to comfortably pay a mortgage — but the criteria for loan approvals are just too tight for them to get the start they need. And they don’t come from generational wealth. So they’re left spending their savings on rent.

With the co-buying program, you can be making above the area’s median income and still qualify for city funding, in the amount of:

• Up to $50K for households earning up to 100% of the area median Income.
• Up to $35K for households earning up to 135% of the median.

This way, the initiative helps people do together what they’ve been unable to do individually.

Are there any catches? No, but there are a few basic rules. Applicants do need to complete a home buying course. And they must:

• Be first-time buyers.
• Pitch in 1.5% or more of their own money for their share of the home price.
• Hold under $100K in liquid assets — although if they have government-sponsored retirement accounts, those won’t count in the limit.

All participants agree, of course, that they’re buying their home to live in it.

On the Right Track

Mayor Wu’s administration has become a housing role model. It’s already helped hundreds of Bostonians break free from the cycle through a variety of homeownership initiatives, such as the One+ Boston mortgage. Boston has managed to create 1,800+ new units of affordable housing over the past two years.

And now there’s the co-buyer model. “This model not only helps people afford a home,” says Jessica Ingram-Bee, “but also fosters a sense of community and mutual support.”

Ingram-Bee adds: “That is so needed in today’s world.”

We may be seeing more of this as other cities take note. Meanwhile, if the market is derailing your dreams, Boston offers an example of how to strategize. Co-buying a building as a group could be one way to get those dreams back on track.

We offer more thoughts about this, including the details of holding a deed as co-owners, in our guide to co-buying a property as tenants in common.