Buying with friends can go beautifully or terribly, and the paperwork usually decides which. We've seen both endings personally. We've co-owned a fourplex with a close friend for years and it has worked out well. We've also watched a partnership implode: one owner acted as property manager on a jointly owned fourplex, gradually cut the other partner out of the shared bank account, and effectively disappeared with control of the money. Same structure, very different outcomes. The safeguard is to treat the deal as a business from day one. Have a real estate attorney draft a written operating agreement before any money changes hands, covering: - Who contributes what, and how profits and expenses split. - How decisions get made, and how you break a deadlock. - What happens if a partner wants out, stops paying their share, or dies. And never give any single partner unilateral control of the finances. Require both signatures on the bank account, or at minimum give every owner full, standing visibility into the money. Going in together can lower your entry cost and pair complementary skills, which is real. Just don't let the goodwill talk you out of the documents. The partnerships that survive co-ownership are the ones where the agreement made trust unnecessary.