Links Property Finance · Home loans for first home buyers: Buying Your First Home With a Partner

There are two ways to hold a property jointly in New South Wales, and the difference is not cosmetic.

• Joint tenants means you own the whole property together, in equal shares, and if one of you dies the other automatically takes full ownership. It is the usual choice for couples and it sits outside a will.
• Tenants in common means you each own a defined share, which can be unequal, and each share can be left to whomever you choose. It suits people contributing different amounts, or who want their share to pass to someone other than the other owner.
• Your conveyancer or solicitor sets this up at purchase. It is easy to decide at the time and awkward to change later, so it is worth an actual conversation rather than a default.

Joint borrowing means you are both liable for the whole debt, not half of it each.

If one of you cannot pay, the lender can pursue the other for the full amount, regardless of what you agreed between yourselves or what share of the title you hold.

Lenders do not require you to be married, and de facto couples are assessed the same way. What lenders care about is whether you are financially interdependent, because that determines whether they assess you as one household or two.

If you keep entirely separate finances and are buying together as something closer to co-investors, that is a different structure again and worth saying so at the outset. The first home buyer checklist covers the sequence either way.

Work out what you can borrow together and, where it matters, what each of you could borrow alone, so the choice is made on numbers.

• Flag the eligibility questions early, particularly where one of you has owned before, because that is the one that most often changes a budget late.
• And match you to a lender whose treatment of both your incomes and both your commitments produces the best outcome. Start with your borrowing position.