It’s hard to get onto the property ladder – especially if you’re going it alone.
Typically people team up with a romantic partner to achieve this, but if you’re unpartnered and keen to get moving, why not look to your friends?
In recent years we’ve seen friends get platonically married and commit to each other in new ways, as attitudes shift around relationships.
Now, we have the cost of living crisis to contend with, too.
Cullen and Olamide, best friends who go by ‘Cola’, are 27 year olds born a week apart – and their bond is strong.
Olamide tells Metro.co.uk: ‘We met at university and we’ve been friends for about seven years. We even worked together after university.’
After finding a mutual love of gaming, a friendship was born.
Cullen says they were both keen to buy property, but didn’t initially think of doing it together.
He adds: ‘I was thinking of buying with another friend and Olamide was thinking of buying with family.
‘Both of those options didn’t work out for either of us, so we started talking about getting it together on our lunch breaks at work.
‘We got excited about the idea, then analysed what could go wrong – there weren’t any reservations after this so we made a plan to make it happen.’
They believe more people will start teaming up with their friends to buy property, especially in areas like London.
Olamide says: ‘Saving up for a deposit for a house in London is a real hurdle, but it’s not impossible.
‘But the main problem with getting on the ladder is having a high enough salary to borrow for a large London mortgage.’
Cullen adds: ‘People in our generation are more eager to progress financially, it’s the same reason why side hustle culture is rampant – capitalism.
‘We also want to have great experiences, and that can be stifled a bit if you’re still living with your parents and don’t have that freedom to live on your own terms.
‘Factors like this mean that people aren’t necessarily waiting to get a romantic partner to get that joint salary boost to get a mortgage.’
It hasn’t been plane sailing though.
Over on TikTok, the duo have become a sensation for sharing their process of working on the fixer-upper they bought.
They estimate big jobs would have cost them £101,000, but using DIY together they’ve done it for £31,000.
Cullen says: ‘We got a mortgage for £450,000, so together we put £45,000 down on the deposit and we’ve spent around £30,00 on renovating. So, in total we’ve spent £75,000.’
The pair faced issues like wood rot, which wasn’t spotted before they bought the property, meaning they had more work on their hands than they anticipated.
The wood rot was a particularly unfortunate issue.
Cullen explains: ‘We were under the impression that the kitchen floor was made from concrete because before we bought the house, we removed some floorboards and saw a concrete slab.
‘But when the time came to tackle some damp, we removed a cupboard and I fell through a wooden floor.
‘The concrete slab we uncovered was only under one section of the kitchen -everything else was rotting wood.’
Olamide adds that the problems didn’t stop there.
He adds: ‘Once we found that we had to rip up the whole kitchen.
‘Living in a house without a place you can cook, have access to running water or wash up dirty dishes was very difficult, especially since we were working on the house for most hours in the day.
‘Shortly after the kitchen calamity we were taken off furlough too, so we had to start balancing our job.
‘We had no time for anything, we weren’t eating well and everywhere was a mess. It made us really appreciate how important a kitchen is.’
Other than Cullen’s GCSE in wood tech, they’d never attempted DIY and were complete newbies while taking on the huge project of doing up a decaying house.
Turning to YouTube as a guide, they figured out what tools they’d need and techniques to learn.
With that, they’ve learned huge amounts about property buying.
‘We wish we’d known that most houses built before 2000 used asbestos in different ways, and it can be very hard to locate in the house,’ Olamide says.
‘We didn’t get an asbestos survey done and we found some while we were renovating and we may not have removed it in the safest way.
‘It would have been great to avoid, but it’s a lesson we’ve learned from.
‘Tiling our bathroom was definitely something that we thought would be insanely difficult as well.
‘We did have to double tile a wall because we messed up the first time, but the actual process of getting the tiles on the wall is quite easy once you get the hang of it.’
There was also another element that intially was bad timing, but turned out to be a blessing in disguise: in 2020, both Cullen and Olamide were furloughed from their jobs due to the pandemic.
Financially, this put a huge strain on them, but it gave them plenty of time to dedicate to the house.
Cullen says: ‘We could focus on renovating the house.
‘However, this put a lot of strain on us because we didn’t have enough money to renovate – and our furlough pay was lower than average because we were new employees.
‘Luckily we had a mortgage holiday from our bank and we had some emergency funds and savings that we kept just in case things went badly.
‘We had to dig into our savings for a while, whilst we bought supplies to do up the house.
‘We worked as a team to make sure we were never in any real difficulty.’
As the situation improved, in late 2021 they quit their jobs and returned to freelancing so they had flexibility between work and the house.
‘Currently we still don’t have a sofa, or a proper living space outside of our bedrooms,’ Olamide adds.
‘But now we have more flexibility to make content on our page, boost our earnings and get the house into a fully livable condition.’
He continues: ‘Buying and renovating a house has also been a steep learning curve for us, so we thought sharing that journey would help anyone that’s planning on doing the same thing in the future.
‘We’ve also made a lot of mistakes in the process so there are definitely some things that people can learn from, so they don’t repeat our errors!’
Should you buy with a friend?
Cullen and Olamide – two friends who never argue – share their advice for picking a friend to buy with.
Olamide says: ‘Not every friend is going to be right for this, but we recommend considering buying with a friend if you trust them with money and if you’ve lived with them before (and you didn’t want to dispose of each other).’
Cullen adds: ‘It’s great if you can work well as a team, we already knew we could because we already do our day job.
‘A shared ambition with the project is also important, which we think must be tied up with a contract that you set out before you invest in the property.
‘We’ve always tried to approach each problem as a team and speak openly about anything we didn’t think was feeling right – we always come out better after those discussions.’
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