Nobody buys a house with someone they expect to fight with. That's the whole problem.
You buy with your sister, or your best friend from college, or the couple you met at a Leschi potluck. Everyone is on their best behavior. The agreement feels like paperwork for people who don't trust each other.
Then somebody gets a job in Denver.
A co-ownership agreement is the document you write while you still like each other. It's a letter to the two of you, three years from now, on the day neither of you wants to have the conversation. Here's what it needs to cover.
Who owns what, and who paid what
Start with the split. Fifty-fifty is easy to write and hard to live with when one person brought more to closing.
Write down each person's contribution and the percentage of the home it buys. Then decide whether extra payments later change that percentage, or just get paid back. Most money fights between co-owners are really fights about memory. Paper fixes memory.
The monthly money
Mortgage, property tax, insurance, utilities, an HOA if there is one. Who pays which bill, into which account, by what date.
And the dull clause that matters most: what happens when a payment is late. Is there a grace period? Does the other owner cover it and get paid back, and on what terms? At what point does a missed payment start to cost someone their place in the house?
Repairs and a reserve
The water heater will die. It will pick a holiday weekend.
Decide how repairs get approved, how big a bill one person can sign off on alone, and whether you'll keep a shared reserve fund for the big stuff. A reserve turns "you owe me $1,800" into a line item nobody has to bring up at dinner.
Who lives where, and the house rules
If you both live there, spell out the private space and the shared space. Then guests, pets, quiet hours, and the partner who is suddenly staying over four nights a week.
Can anyone rent out a room? Write it down. "I assumed" doesn't hold up well in a disagreement.
How decisions get made
Daily stuff and big stuff are different animals. Repainting the hallway shouldn't need a vote. Refinancing, selling, or a major remodel should.
Name which is which. Then name what counts as a yes: unanimous, majority, or weighted by ownership percentage.
When someone wants out
This is the section that earns the whole document. People move, marry, divorce, have twins, get a job in Denver.
A solid exit clause answers at least four things:
- How the home, or the departing owner's piece of it, gets valued, and who picks the appraiser
- Whether the remaining owners get first chance to buy
- How long they have to come up with the money
- What happens if nobody can buy, including whether the house gets listed and when
Here's why this matters in Washington specifically. Under RCW 7.52.010, when people hold property as tenants in common, one or more of them can bring a partition action. And the court can order a sale if the property can't be divided without great prejudice to the owners. You can't exactly saw a house in half. So with no written plan, the fallback might be a judge. Ask your attorney how your agreement should handle that.
Death, divorce, and new people
What happens to an owner's piece of the house if they die? Does it pass to their heirs, who now co-own a home with you? Can an owner bring a new spouse onto their share? Can they sell to a stranger without your input?
These clauses feel grim at signing. Later they feel like a gift.
Disputes
Pick the process before you need it. Talk first, then mediation, then whatever comes next. Put it in writing so the next disagreement has a path that isn't the group chat.
How reSpace builds this in from the start
So that's the homemade version. It works, if you think of everything and hire a good lawyer.
reSpace does it differently. It's structured co-homeownership: each co-owner holds a membership interest in a single-purpose LLC that owns one home. You get exclusive use of your private suite and shared use of the common areas, like the kitchen and living room. And the LLC runs on an operating agreement that covers the same ground as everything above: each co-owner's percentage, how decisions get made, how payments work, what happens if someone sells or stops paying, and how disputes get resolved.
A few specifics from how reSpace describes the model today:
- Each co-owner has their own separate ownership interest and their own separate loan, so you aren't tied to anyone else's finances.
- Want to sell? Your co-owners get first right of refusal, and the remaining co-owners approve anyone new.
- Part of every monthly payment goes into a maintenance reserve. A dead furnace isn't a surprise invoice.
- The homes are owner-occupied, and reSpace manages the property without owning it. The LLC owns it.
You still read every page before you sign. (Please read every page.) But you're joining a structure written for co-ownership before you showed up, not drafting one from a template at your kitchen table.
The first reSpace home is The Leschi Collection, a Victorian in West Leschi with five private suites, from $118,750. And if you already own a home and wonder whether it could work this way, that conversation starts with a What's Possible Now Assessment. The Assessment Fee covers the property evaluation.
Questions people ask
Do we need a co-ownership agreement if we're best friends?
Yes. Especially then. The agreement protects the friendship by settling the hard questions while everyone is calm and nobody is moving to Denver.
Can I write a co-ownership agreement myself?
You can draft one, and the sections above make a decent outline. Have a real estate attorney licensed in your state review it before anyone signs, because how you hold title and what your state allows change what the document can actually do.
What's the difference between a co-ownership agreement and an LLC operating agreement?
A co-ownership agreement is a contract between people who own a home together directly. In a reSpace home, the house sits inside a single-purpose LLC and each co-owner holds a membership interest in it. The operating agreement sets the rules for that LLC. Same hard questions, different structure.
What happens if a co-owner stops paying?
Whatever the agreement says, which is exactly why you write one. In a reSpace home, the operating agreement spells out what happens when someone stops paying, and the LLC can act to protect the property and the other co-owners.
Curious what co-homeownership looks like in a real Seattle home? Join the waitlist at respace.co and you'll hear first when homes open up. Rather talk it through? The team is happy to talk, no pitch required.
Not an investment. Not a solicitation.