Buying a house with a friend, partner or parent: who owns it and who signs

Buying a house with someone else at a glance

Who signs what when you buy with someone?

Each person in a purchase has a role: owner, borrower, guarantor or someone who will just live there. Each role signs different papers and carries different risks. Tell the checker at the top of this page who is involved and it lists what each person signs. Without it, the table of the four usual set-ups below answers the same question.

A guide to the usual papers. Your lender’s mortgage instructions decide what it needs, and we confirm it when we receive them.

Can I buy a house with a friend, and what do we each own?

Yes. The law does not care whether you are a couple, friends, siblings or a parent and child. What matters is whose name goes on the title at HM Land Registry, and how you hold it.

There are two layers. The legal title says who the owners are: at most four people. Behind it sits who owns what share of the value. You can own it equally and pass automatically to each other if one of you dies, or own set shares that each of you can leave in a will. Our guide to owning a home with someone else explains the two choices, and GOV.UK sets them out too.

If you do not say how you hold it, Land Registry enters a restriction on the title by default (a “Form A” restriction). If you are putting in different amounts, record who paid what in writing before completion, in a declaration of trust.

Who goes on the title and who goes on the mortgage?

The title and the mortgage are two separate lists of names. They do not have to match. These are the four usual set-ups, and what each one means for the people in it.

Lender names are examples from their public pages, checked 29 Oct 2026. Criteria change, and each lender words its own papers. Your mortgage offer and the lender’s instructions to us decide what applies. Sources: HM Land Registry practice guide 24, Barclays joint mortgages, Barclays Mortgage Boost, NatWest family-backed mortgages, HSBC Letter of Consent and Postponement. This separate advice is often called independent legal advice.

What does a parent sign if they help with the mortgage but won’t own the home?

It depends on how they help.

On a joint borrower, sole proprietor mortgage the parent is a borrower. They sign the mortgage papers with you and are fully responsible for the payments from the start, even though the home is yours alone. Barclays says the helper must get legal advice from a different solicitor; NatWest says from an adviser separate from the one handling your purchase. NatWest says this happens after the mortgage offer is issued and before the money is released. Leave time for it.

As a guarantor, the parent is not a borrower. They sign the lender’s guarantee papers (the lender decides what they are) and only pay if you cannot.

A parent who owns their own home and goes on the title, even with a small share, can change your stamp duty. See the tax answer below.

Does anyone living with us need to sign something?

Often, yes. Lenders want to know that no one else living in the home can stop them selling it if the loan is not repaid. So they may ask every adult who will live there, and is not on the mortgage, to sign a consent. HSBC’s form, for example, is signed by each occupier aged 17 or over at completion. The signer agrees to put any right they have behind the lender’s, and HSBC strongly recommends they take independent legal advice first.

This catches out adult children, a partner who is not buying, and lodgers. Tell us at the start who will live there.

Does one buyer’s other home change the tax for all of you?

Yes. Stamp duty looks at every buyer, not just the one with the bigger share.

• First-time buyer relief needs every buyer to be a first-time buyer, and every buyer to plan to live there.
• The higher rates for additional homes apply to the whole price if they would apply to any one of you on your own. It does not matter how small that person’s share is. A buyer’s spouse or civil partner counts too.
• The surcharge for buyers who are not UK resident works the same way: if any one of you would pay it alone, it applies to the whole price. One exception: if you are buying with your spouse or civil partner, you live together and one of you is UK resident, you are both treated as UK resident for this.

Worked example, two buyers at £425,000 in England:

Who pays the difference between you is for you to agree. Check your own figures with our stamp duty calculator. An estimate for an individual buying a home in England or Northern Ireland. This is not tax advice: HMRC is the authority on what you owe.

What changes if the home is in Wales?

The ownership rules are the same in Wales: the same four-name limit, the same Land Registry and the same deeds. The tax is different. Wales has Land Transaction Tax, paid to the Welsh Revenue Authority, and there is no relief for first-time buyers. The higher rates follow the same idea as in England: if they apply to any of you on your own, they apply to the whole purchase, and a spouse or civil partner counts too. The Welsh Government’s own example is a first-time buyer buying with a mother who owns another property: the purchase will likely be at the higher rates.

We act on purchases in Wales.

Can more than four of us buy together?

Yes, but only four can be on the legal title. If more people are named, the first four who are able and willing to act hold the title for everyone. The others still own their shares, but that has to be recorded properly before completion. Our quote form asks how many of you are buying, from one up to “Five or more”, so we know at the start.

What does each of you need to send us, and what does it cost?

Everyone who will be named on the title goes through our identity, anti-money-laundering and bankruptcy checks. These are charged per person, so a joint purchase has slightly higher disbursements.

Each of you also shows where your share of the money comes from. If part of it is a gift, see our gifted deposit guide, listed below.

The deposit reaches us at least 1 working day before exchange and the balance at least 1 working day before completion. If two of you are sending money, both payments must arrive by then.

• Buying a residential property: our fee range is in the box below. Typical disbursements for one or two people are itemised in your quote.
• Only if you use one: Lifetime ISA or Help to Buy (ISA), charged per account. If two of you each have one, that is two accounts. Our quote form asks how many of you hold one. We are not tax or financial advisers: for whether to save into an ISA, speak to a financial adviser.
• Only if part of your deposit is a gift: Gifted Deposit Check, or Gifted Deposit Check (from outside the UK).

Each of these is on our fees page. Stamp Duty Land Tax or Land Transaction Tax and the HM Land Registry fee are government charges in their own box, never added to our fees. We give you a written, itemised quote before you instruct us.

What goes wrong when friends or family buy together?

1. Unequal deposits with nothing in writing. One of you puts in more and assumes it comes back first. Without a written record, the default may be equal shares. Record it before completion, in a declaration of trust.
2. The parent who “only helps” but owns another home. Put on the title as a co-owner, their other home can bring in the higher rates for the whole purchase. If they only go on the mortgage, ask us before you apply how that affects the tax.
3. The adult who lives there but signed nothing. An adult child or partner who will live in the home may need to sign the lender’s occupier consent before completion. Tell us early.
4. One of you wants out later. Coming off the deeds does not take you off the mortgage; only the lender can release you. Changing the owners later is a transfer of equity.

What happens next

• Buying a house: the whole process with us
• Conveyancing for first-time buyers
• Gifted deposit: what the giver sends
• More buyer situations, explained