Unmarried home buyers say they are giving priority to a financial foundation over a legal one
4 min
The big wedding can wait. Couples are deciding they would rather take the plunge into homeownership.
In reshuffling the traditional order of adult milestones, some couples may decide not to marry at all, while others say they are willing to delay a wedding. Buying a home is as much, if not more of a commitment, they reason. It helps them build financial stability when the housing market is historically unaffordable.
In 2023, about 555,000 unmarried couples said that they had bought their home in the previous year, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Census Bureau data. That is up 46% from 10 years earlier, when just under 381,000 couples did the same.
Unmarried couples amounted to more than 11% of all U.S. home sales. The percentage has climbed steadily over the past two decades—a period in which marriage rates have fallen. These couples make up triple the share of the housing market that they did in the mid-1980s, according to the National Association of Realtors.
To make it work, couples must look past the significant risk that the relationship could blow up, or something could happen to one partner. Without a marriage certificate, living situations and finances are more likely to fall into limbo, attorneys say.
Mark White, 59 years old, and Sheila Davidson, 62, bought a lakeside townhouse together in Newport News, Va., in 2021. But only her name is on the deed. He sometimes worries about what would happen to the house if something happened to her. They have told their children that he should inherit the property, but don’t have formal documentation.
“We need to get him on the deed at some point,” Davidson said.
White and Davidson both had previous marriages, and decided they don’t want to do it again. They also believe tying the knot would affect their retirement benefits and tax brackets.
Couples that forgo or postpone marriage say they are giving priority to a financial foundation over a legal one. The median homeowner had nearly $400,000 in wealth in 2022, compared with roughly $10,000 for renters, according to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances.
Even couples that get married first are often focused on the house. Many engaged couples ask for down-payment help in lieu of traditional wedding gifts.
“A mortgage feels like a more concrete step toward their future together than a wedding,” said Emily Luk, co-founder of Plenty, a financial website for couples.
Elise Dixon and Nick Blue, both 29, watched last year as the Fed lifted rates, ostensibly pushing up the monthly costs on a mortgage. The couple, together for four years, decided to use $80,000 of their combined savings, including an unexpected inheritance she received from her grandfather, to buy a split-level condo in Washington, D.C.
“Buying a house is actually a bigger commitment than an engagement,” Dixon said.
They did that, too, getting engaged eight months after their April 2023 closing date. They are planning a small ceremony on the Maryland waterfront next year with around 75 guests, which they expect to cost less than they spent on the home’s down payment and closing costs.
The ages at which people buy homes and enter marriages have both been trending upward. The median age of first marriage for men is 30.2, and for women, 28.6, according to the Census Bureau. That is up from 29.3 and 27.0 a decade earlier. The National Association of Realtors reported this year that the median age of first-time buyers was 38, up from 31 in 2014.
Family lawyers—and parents—sometimes suggest protections in case the unmarried couple breaks up. A prenup-like cohabitation agreement spells out who keeps the house, and how to divide the financial obligations. Without the divorce process, a split can be even messier, legal advisers say.
Family law attorneys say more unmarried people are calling for legal advice, but often balk at planning for a potential split, along with the cost of drawing up such agreements, which can range from $1,000 to $3,000, according to attorney-matching service Legal Match.
Dixon, the Washington condo buyer, said she brushed off her mother’s suggestion that she draft an agreement with Blue detailing how much she invested, figuring that their mutual trust and equal contributions made it unnecessary. (They are planning to get a prenup when they wed, she said.)
There are a lot of questions couples don’t often think about, such as whether one owner has the option to buy the other out, and how quickly they need to identify a real-estate agent if they decide to sell, said Ryan Malet, a real-estate lawyer in the D.C. region.
The legal risks often don’t deter young home buyers.
Peyton Kolb, 26, and her fiancé figured that a 150-person wedding would cost $200,000 or more. Instead, they bought a three-bedroom near Tampa with a down payment of less than $50,000.
“We could spend it all on one day, or we could invest in something that would build equity and give us space to grow,” said Kolb, who works in new-home sales.
Owning a place where guests could sleep in an extra bedroom, instead of on the couch in their old rental, “really solidified us starting our lives together,” Kolb said. Their wedding is set for next May.
Homes and weddings have both gotten more expensive, but there are signs that home prices are rising faster. From 2019 to 2023, the median sales price for existing single-family homes rose by 44%, according to the National Association of Realtors. The average cost of a wedding increased 25% over that time, according to annual survey data from The Knot.
Roughly three quarters of couples move in together before marriage, and may already be considering the trade-offs between buying and renting. The cost of both has risen sharply over the past few years, but rent rises regularly while buying with a fixed-rate mortgage caps at least some of the costs.
An $800 rent hike prompted Sonali Prabhu and Ryan Willis, both 27, to look at buying. They were already paying $3,200 in monthly rent on their two-bedroom Austin, Texas, apartment, and felt they had outgrown it while working from home.
In October, they closed on a $425,000 three-bed, three-bath house. Their mortgage payment is $200 more than their rent would have been, but they have more space. They split the down payment and she paid about $50,000 for some renovations.
Her dad’s one request was that the house face east for good fortune, she said. Both parents are eagerly awaiting an engagement.
“We’re very solid right now,” said Prabhu, who plans to get married in 2026. “The marriage will come when it comes.”
Copyright 2020, Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide. LEARN MORE
What a quarter-million dollars gets you in the western capital.
Alexandre de Betak and his wife are focusing on their most personal project yet.
They’ve dealt with billionaires, signed NDAs and fielded bizarre requests. Four real-estate power brokers dish on how they got the deal done.
11 min
The first $100 million home sale in the U.S. happened in 2011, when Russian-born billionaire Yuri Milner purchased a lavish mansion in Silicon Valley in a nine-figure deal. Back then, Milner’s buy was an outlier and set an ambitious benchmark for the luxury market. Nowadays, as the ranks of ultra wealthy individuals swell globally, $100 million-plus transactions barely cause ripples in markets like New York, Miami, Los Angeles, Palm Beach, Fla., and Aspen, Colo. More than 40 transactions have closed nationally at or above that benchmark in the intervening years, according to appraiser Jonathan Miller .
Behind those deals are a small group of real-estate power brokers responsible for marketing and selling the homes to the billionaire class. We talked to four agents whose deals have crossed the nine-figure threshold about how the biggest transactions really unfold. The interviews have been edited for clarity.
For real-estate agents, landing a high-profile or billionaire client is a painstaking and competitive process, and often means pitching against rival agents. Each agent has their own secret for getting an advantage.
JILL HERTZBERG : “You’ve got to read the paper and watch the news. I remember when Shaquille O’Neal was coming to the Miami Heat, each person on my team probably called 100 people, asking ‘Do you know Shaq?’ One person would give us the name of another person and then another person. We were lunatics.
We finally got to him and he said, ‘No, I have an agent already.’ But we convinced him to give us a couple of hours, and that no one knew Miami like we did. The first house we took him to was the one he eventually bought, a beautiful estate on Star Island.
RYAN SERHANT: For the buyers we know who are trophy-home hunters, we keep our eyes on the homes in Palm Beach, Miami, Texas, Colorado and California that could go at these price points. We keep tabs on whether the owners would be willing to sell.
HERTZBERG: We went on a really big listing appointment on La Gorce Island in Miami Beach once. They asked us to come Tuesday at 10 a.m. When we showed up, there was another top agent already sitting on the patio. Another one arrived soon after. They had lined us all up at half-hour intervals. There was a little smile there to each other, like maybe we should just all do it together.
For $100 million homes, the prospective buyer pool is relatively small. That often means dealing with the same people over and over.
RAYNI WILLIAMS: It’s a very elite group of people. A lot of times they are collectors of trophy homes. Even if they don’t want to buy the property, they often will call because they want to come see it. It’s just a vanity showing. For me, it’s kind of like being a docent in an art gallery. They are coming in to admire the art. They’ll say, ‘please tell me about this architecturally significant property,’ and ask me what I know about Tadao Ando, the Japanese architect whose work is really in vogue. You’re cultivating relationships. Wealthy people love to educate themselves on all the latest and greatest.
Pricing homes at the highest end of the market is more art than science. Frequently, luxury homes come on the market for big-ticket prices, but later sell for significantly less .
WILLIAMS: It starts with the seller and what their expectation is. It’s about replacement cost, location and then data. You have to take into account how much it’s going to take to get them out of there without losing money, and the brain damage that it would take for somebody to re-create the property. People at this level are willing to pay a premium when they find something they love, because maybe they are getting older and they only have 20 good summers left, or their grandchildren are getting older. What is the value of your life if you’re under construction and you’re taking daily and weekly construction and design meetings? It’s a headache and a lot of clients tell me it can be hard on their marriage.
HERTZBERG: We’re going to go to the highest number we can possibly get without tipping over, then see how the market responds. If you tip over, that’s when you have price reductions, or you lose the listing or people get unhappy. Sometimes, you advise the seller to price at $100 million and then he speaks to other agents and they say $200 million. The seller will say, ‘We’re going to go with them, because they believe in the property more.’
RILEY WARWICK: Some agents have a strategy I don’t particularly subscribe to, which is to take a listing at all costs or at any price, then use it to market themselves. They say, ‘Well, who knows, maybe someone will pay this. Or if I can get the fish in the boat, then I can lower the price until eventually someone buys it.’
SERHANT: Sometimes the best marketing plan is to have no price, and not go officially on the market at all. Oftentimes, especially with super luxury homes, people want what other people can’t have. We’ve had buyers pay a premium because they don’t want the seller to put the property on the market. They don’t want anyone else to have it, and they don’t want anyone talking about it ever.
In 2017, a Los Angeles spec house became the highest priced home in the country when it listed with Williams for $250 million. It was the creation of Bruce Makowsky, who made a fortune selling handbags on QVC. It sold in 2019 for $94 million, plus $10 million of furniture.
WILLIAMS: I think his strategy was just to get it on everyone’s radar. It worked. We touched hands with every single extraordinarily wealthy person that came to L.A. at that time. They all wanted to see it. At one point, he had a $150 million offer from a local that really wanted it and Bruce didn’t take it. I think he wanted it to be the most expensive house in the world and he wanted the price to have a 2 in front of it. Years later, he ended up selling it for $104 million to one of the first people who ever saw it. (The purchase was tied to Saudi real-estate magnate Fawaz Al-Hokair. )
These houses either sell in three months, or they sell in three years. They are hard to sell quickly because it’s a discretionary purchase. It’s emotional. This isn’t a family that’s relocating from New York City and has to get here to get their kids into school in Bel-Air. This isn’t a family that needs a house. If you’re buying a $100 million-plus dollar house, you already have a really nice home somewhere.
Even the most expensive homes often need to be staged .
WARWICK: That means removing potentially offensive items. We’ve had animal mounts replaced with contemporary art and political flags or signs removed. People get very offended. I’ve had people walk into an ultra luxury home, see an animal mount and turn around and walk right out. More than once.
Many brokers approach finding a buyer for a mega-listing systematically, but sometimes it comes down to chance.
SERHANT: You’re mass marketing and you’re also target marketing. We draw up a list of names from the Forbes list, the Bloomberg Billionaires Index, all the global wealth lists. We look at which companies went public over the last 24 months, which companies are about to go public. Who recently had or is about to have a liquidity event? Have there been major marriages or engagements? Sometimes, I think I know exactly who the buyer is going to be for a New York apartment, and then it’s a fracking billionaire from Texas. I’m like, really?
I once went to Masa, the expensive sushi restaurant in New York, with my wife. The couple next to us recognises me. He recognised me from TV. She recognised me from TikTok. I saw that she had a really big rock on her finger, so I asked if they were engaged. I suggested they needed a new place. Two weeks later, I sold them a full-floor apartment at Central Park Tower for $50 million.
Listings for trophy homes inevitably draw millions of eyeballs. Agents must determine whether interested parties are qualified buyers before they let them in the door.
SERHANT: To see a $100 million house, you need to show the ability to close in cash or that your net worth is over $1 billion.
WILLIAMS: Nobody gets into my properties unless I can prove who they are. Ninety-nine percent of people can be googled, except Asian buyers. If they can’t be googled, then we require proof of funds, usually in the form of a letter from a bank or private wealth manager on professional letterhead. It’s usually not hard to verify if somebody is real or not. If you are a mega-buyer, you have a footprint. You’ve donated money, you’ve been photographed.
SERHANT: There are con artists everywhere, there are people that want to waste your time everywhere. Even billionaires. Sometimes they are just in New York or they are in Florida and they fancy seeing something nice. They have no intention to buy.
HERTZBERG: If they say they are under the radar, we don’t take them. Nowadays, no one’s under the radar who has money.
Dealing with the global elite often requires being flexible for showings.
SERHANT: I’ve done showings in the middle of the night and early in the morning when the streets are totally empty. I had a very prominent and recognizable guy in finance who asked to see a New York property at 4:30 a.m. I understood why he did it. He knew that no one would see us. I’ve also had people wear disguises. I had somebody pre-Covid, a celebrity, who wore a baseball hat with a long black wig underneath and sunglasses. Post-Covid, everyone just wears masks.
WILLIAMS: Sometimes, a really high-profile person will register the name under their CFO or under an alias of another prominent person that would still be approved for the showing. And then when they turn up, you know who they are, and you play along.
And it can require pulling out all the stops.
WILLIAMS: I once had a guy who had just had a ton of success and he told me during the first showing that he was soon headed to Miami with his friends to celebrate. He wanted to bring them to see the house before they headed to the airport. I tried to get into the psyche of this guy and what he was into. I did some research and I found out that he loved gaming, so in the movie theatre, I put an Xbox. He had told me that he loved Japanese food, so I had catered sushi with servers throughout the property. Then, I got these gorgeous Ralph Lauren leather satchel bags as carry-ons he could take on the plane and filled them with chocolate from all the best spots in L.A., as well as marketing materials for the home. He texted me from the plane to say how incredible the experience was. And he bought the house. For $70 million.”
WARWICK: You think that these incredibly successful people are so busy, but I actually find them to be interested in every little detail of the properties we show them. One of my clients wanted to walk the entire property line of a 40- or 50-acre property, which took about an hour. They wanted to understand the land they are buying. One client was very fixated on the picture frames in the house and they wanted the seller to leave them behind, over 100 of them. The seller had to take their own family photos out of every single frame. I had another client who came in with their own water-testing kit to test the drinkability of the water and make sure the PH level wasn’t too high. They wanted the water in the kitchen to have a higher mineral content for their espresso machine.
Sometimes agents field unusual requests from sellers and buyers
WARWICK: I’ve seen more than once where a buyer will allow the seller to stay in the property or rent the property back for sometimes up to a year, or return for a holiday. I’ve had a seller want just one more Christmas in the house with their family, and the buyer allowed them that. I’ve also had deals where people trade additional houses as part of the transaction. The buyer has a property in another state, so they’ll give the seller X dollars plus their house in another state.
SERHANT: We had one very well known mega-billionaire come through a $250 million penthouse listing in New York. That apartment has the highest private residential ballroom on the planet. We’re standing in that empty room and he beckons me over with his finger. He says, ‘If I put a ping pong table in this room, will it be the highest ping-pong table on earth?’ I was like, ‘I’ll have to check, but I think it’s definitely up there.’
WILLIAMS : We had somebody that wanted to test out the house, and use it for a weekend. I wasn’t convinced but the seller wanted to do it. The person probably wanted to do their own thing, but I couldn’t help myself. I went full on to make their experience as pleasurable as possible. I had a masseuse and a private chef come to the house to cater to them. If they wanted freshly-baked chocolate chip cookies at 3.30 in the morning, they could have them.
The typical commission for an average real-estate sale is 6%, split between the buyer’s and seller’s agents. For nine-figure luxury homes, agents often settle for a lower fee.
WILLIAMS: Taking on these big listings is expensive, and you have to have a big book of business to afford it. You can spend $100,000 out of your own pocket to market these. The commission is usually a 2% fee, but they might ask if you would do it for a little less, like 1.75%. But generally speaking, the most successful people I’ve worked with are very happy to pay the full commission. They want you to do an amazing job.
WARWICK: We fly videographers in from all over the country to film our properties, we have architects design renderings of what could be built on these properties, we do all-day photoshoots from sunup to sundown.
Any out-of-pocket expenses aren’t reimbursed or paid back should an agent lose the listing before it sells.
WARWICK: It’s a huge financial commitment and sometimes you carry these properties for a year or two. It’s a risk and that’s why sometimes we don’t take listings. If the seller is unrealistic, it’s an investment not worth making.
It’s very common for buyers and sellers at the top end of the market to ask agents to sign nondisclosure agreements, preventing them from speaking about the parties involved in the deal. However, news of the transaction often leaks regardless.
SERHANT: It’s tough to keep the deals private because of everyone that touches the transaction. Your buyer is coming in contact with door staff, the seller, the other real-estate agents that might be involved and their teams, the driver. There are points of contact everywhere. I spend a lot of time making sure that everybody in the transaction is aware of the confidentiality.
HERTZBERG: I would love for people to know that I work with these types of people, but it’s more important to work with the people. It’s funny because I’m married to a litigator and he has so many confidential relationships that I don’t know about. If I have a big deal with an NDA, I can’t tell him the name either. We just don’t go there.
Negotiations often require creativity.
WILLIAMS: I was doing a deal close to $100 million and there was a $5 million delta between what the buyer was offering and the seller was willing to accept. It’s all relative; at that price point, $5 million is not a big difference. I normally wouldn’t do this, but I decided to get them together. I had them meet in a private room at the Beverly Hills Hotel. We ordered them some food, set them up and then left. By about four or five hours later— maybe some cocktails were involved— they bridged the gap and split the difference. Sometimes, you have to be smart enough to know to get out of the way. The two of them are still friends.
Dealing with the wealthiest clients comes with perks.
WILLIAMS: After I sold the Bruce Makowsky house, he called and said, ‘Meet me in your office in 20 minutes.’ He walks in with this huge, white box and plops it on my desk. Inside, there’s a coffee-table book all about his megayacht. “It’s yours,” he said. He gifted us 12 days on his yacht, which was docked in St. Barts. I took my whole family and best friends.
