Many couples are choosing to purchase a home together before getting married. This is great in many ways as it allows you to become comfortable living with your partner before saying your vows. On the other hand, you may encounter some difficulties during the buying process. Below are three tips to help you with this:

Remain Open

Ensuring that you maintain open communication is imperative when you are buying a property with your partner, and this is especially true for unmarried couples. In today's society, married couples have a sizable safety net should the marriage fall apart. As an unmarried couple, you and your partner don't have this reassurance and, as such, you have to fend for yourselves. Therefore, it's important to be entirely open with your partner about your credit history and current financial situation as this is going to come out of the closet at some point.

If you've kept some secrets from your partner, now is the time to sit down and work things out. When you are buying the property, your credit history will be available for your partner to see. Similarly, you will be able to see your partner's entire financial history until now. As such, take the time to review your financial history and discuss any black marks with your partner.

Decide How to Manage Your Budget

Long-term commitments require long-term planning. When it comes to buying a home with your partner, this is even more important, so make sure you take the time to discuss your budget and how you are going to split the cost of living together.

First, you need to decide how you are going to manage your accounts. The easiest way to do this is to open a joint account. You can use this account for payments such as your mortgage, utilities and groceries. This may seem like a trivial difference from having separate accounts, but it can help you significantly and limit your headaches down the line.

Of course, you also need to decide how the payments are going to be split. If you and your partner earn significantly different incomes, you need to come up with a suitable way of paying your bills. Rather than using a fixed amount of each person's salary, consider using a percentage cut instead. Using a percentage means that the same relative amount of each person's income is used, which ensures everything is split fairly between you and your partner.

Title Your Property

Make sure you take the time to sort out issues related to legal ownership of the property and what will happen in the event of either partner's death. This definitely isn't the most exciting part of buying a property with your partner, but is one of the most important from a legal perspective. This is because the legalities of buying a home are different when you are an unmarried couple.

If you are looking to have equal ownership of the property, you could potentially sign the agreement as common tenants. This is useful to gain some protection in court, but you may require additional proof if you get into a disagreement. To mitigate this, you should speak to a lawyer about signing a legal agreement before moving forward with the transaction. Essentially, an agreement can be drawn up by your lawyer that outlines exactly what will be done in the event of separation. These agreements allow you to tailor the contract to your specific needs, which is great for reaching an amicable solution that both parties are happy with. 

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