If you can't afford a house in high-priced Vancouver, you can always split one down the middle.
James Tansey and Patrick Lewis and their spouses did just that. Dr. Tansey and Mr. Lewis, who both work at the University of British Columbia, bought a 5,000-square-foot arts and crafts house in upscale Kerrisdale and physically divided it from top to bottom.
Both say they are getting a better deal by dividing a big house than if they had purchased individual homes in the same area.
"The thing about getting a much bigger house is the cost per square foot goes down, because not many people want to take on a house that size," Dr. Tansey says.
The two couples share the title and the mortgage, and the two units are not defined legally as separate dwellings. And while their main entrances are on opposite sides of the house, there is a pair of internal communicating doors that are kept locked - unless the families are sharing a babysitter or co-hosting a party.
"We took out part of the ceiling space and put in soundproofing to take out some of the noise," Dr. Tansey says. "It's no worse than living in a townhouse or duplex. You hear footsteps and sometimes voices, but because the building is solidly built, it's fine."
The real-estate crunch is pushing people to become more resourceful, says Spice Lucks, a real-estate agent in the expensive west side of Vancouver.
"It's people wanting to adapt to a marketplace that has strained their resources, so you get creative out-of-the-box ideas floating around about how to enter in," she says.
A big part of the appeal of co-ownership is lifestyle. For people who work in the west side, sharing a house can be less inconvenient than having a long commute.
Julian Dierkes, who is from Germany, says that co-housing is more common in Europe. He and his family live in Kitsilano in a house they bought with another family three years ago for $700,000. To make it work, they had to install a kitchen upstairs, reinforce the foundation and close in a space under the back stairs to allow for an additional bedroom.
"On my single salary, there's no way I could carry a mortgage," says Dr. Dierkes, who is an assistant professor at UBC's Centre for Japanese Research. "And the mortgage was really easy, to my surprise. We went to TD Bank and they were quite eager to give us a mortgage, because for them they had two full-time salaries. They said, 'Great. Looks secure.' "
Most parties who share property sign a legal agreement that outlines what would happen should one want to sell, or if someone defaults on the mortgage.
"It does require cordial relations for sure," Dr. Dierkes says. It requires the ability to deal with each other in a business-like fashion."
For the Tansey and Lewis families, common goals informed their decision to share. Dr. Tansey is the founder of a non-profit carbon-offsetting program and is an assistant professor at UBC's W. Maurice Young Centre for Applied Ethics, where Mr. Lewis is managing director.
"The four of us have decided that when it comes time, we'll give serious consideration to using geothermal heating, that type of thing," Mr. Lewis says.
Money lenders are also gearing their services to the niche. Vancity credit union offers a Mixer Mortgage designed for friends and family who want to co-invest; it will also arrange a legal co-ownership agreement.
"We often see parents and children, and friends who buy together," says mortgage broker Rob Regan-Pollock. "In doing so, these people are able to build home equity faster by combining resources and sharing in the profits of higher-priced real estate."
The arrangement works for friends Sherryl Yeager and Tony Wyman, who had never owned real estate before they bought and divided a house with a $100,000 renovation.
