Meet the couples putting mortgages before marriage

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Subscribe to enjoy similar stories. 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.