Married couples were 61% of home buyers in NAR’s 2025 profile, and only half of first-time buyers. A meaningful minority of the rest are unmarried couples buying together, often because two incomes are the only way to reach a $429,300 median home at a mid-6s mortgage rate. The mortgage does not care whether you are married. The law does. Marriage comes with default rules for who owns what and what happens if you split or one of you dies; an unmarried couple gets none of those defaults and has to write its own. Here is what to settle before you sign.

The lender looks at both of you, and prices off the weaker file

When two people apply together, both credit reports, both incomes and both sets of debts go into the application. The income side is additive; the credit side is not. Lenders pull scores from all three bureaus for each borrower and take each person’s middle score. When a loan is underwritten manually, the representative score for the application is the lowest of the borrowers’ scores (Fannie Mae now lets certain manually underwritten loans meet the minimum-score test on the average of the borrowers’ median scores instead). Automated underwriting weighs each file’s risk factors rather than applying one number, but a partner with thin or damaged credit can still raise the rate or sink the approval for both of you. Fannie Mae’s automated system no longer enforces a fixed minimum score; loans underwritten manually still need 620 (640 for ARMs), and most lenders keep their own floors.

So the first conversation is the unromantic one: pull your reports (free, weekly, at AnnualCreditReport.com), compare scores, and look at each other’s debt. Lenders also want two years of employment history, so a job change one of you is contemplating belongs in this conversation too. If one partner’s credit would drag the loan down, you have an option married couples also use: put only the stronger borrower on the mortgage. That partner must qualify on their income alone, and the other can still go on the deed, subject to the lender’s rules for a non-borrowing owner. If the down payment is coming from the partner who is not on the loan, Fannie Mae’s gift rules accept a fiancé or domestic partner as a donor, with a signed gift letter stating that no repayment is expected.

The loan and the deed are two different documents

The mortgage note says who owes the money. The deed says who owns the house. They do not have to match, and the mismatches are where unmarried buyers get hurt.

  • Both on the loan, both on the deed is the default and the cleanest: you share the debt and the ownership.
  • One on the loan, both on the deed means one of you carries all of the debt and half of the house. Fine if you both understand it; dangerous if the borrower assumes they can force a sale to get out.
  • Both on the loan, one on the deed is the arrangement to refuse. The person not on the deed owes the bank and owns nothing.

The lender’s lien is on the house regardless of whose name is on the loan, and getting a name off a mortgage later almost always means refinancing in the remaining partner’s name alone, at whatever rates are current then and on that one income.

How you hold title

If you both go on the deed, you choose a form of co-ownership, and the choice decides what happens when one of you dies. The two forms unmarried co-owners generally choose between are:

  • Joint tenancy. Each owner holds an undivided interest, and it carries a right of survivorship: when one owner dies, the other absorbs their share automatically. It requires equal interests acquired at the same time, and it is broken if one owner transfers their interest.
  • Tenancy in common. Shares can be unequal, which suits a couple contributing different amounts, and each owner can transfer their share freely. There is no survivorship: a deceased owner’s share goes to whoever their will names or, without a will, to whoever state intestacy law designates, which you should not assume is you.

Courts read an ambiguous deed as a tenancy in common, so if you want survivorship, the deed has to say so. Some forms of title and some default rules are reserved for married couples and vary by state; the form that fits you is a question for a real estate attorney in your state, not for the closing table.

Put the breakup in writing while you still like each other

Divorce law gives married couples a process for dividing a house. Unmarried couples get whatever they agreed to in writing and, failing that, a lawsuit. A co-ownership agreement, drafted by an attorney and signed before closing, should cover at least:

  • Money in. Who paid what toward the down payment and closing costs, and whether that is repaid first or converted into an ownership percentage.
  • Money every month. How the mortgage, taxes, insurance, repairs and improvements are split, and what happens if one of you cannot pay for a stretch.
  • The exit. If you separate, who has the right to buy the other out, how the price is set (an independent appraisal is the usual answer), how long the buyout takes, and what triggers a sale if nobody can buy. Include who lives in the house in the meantime.
  • Death and incapacity. Whether survivorship applies, whether each of you carries life insurance sized to the mortgage so the survivor can keep the house, and what your wills say.

The rules that govern property when unmarried couples separate vary from state to state, and you should not count on any of them to produce the result you would have chosen. That is why this agreement is not a do-it-yourself document.

The decision

Buying together is a bigger legal entanglement than most couples have faced before. That is not a reason to avoid it. Two incomes and two credit files can reach a home that neither of you could afford alone, and at 2026 prices that matters. Do it in the right order: work out what you can handle on the payment you would both be signing, get pre-approved together so the lender’s view of your combined file is real rather than guessed, and pay an attorney before you pay a lender.