You know that half-joking pact you made with your best friend? The one where, if you’re both still single at 40, you’ll just buy a house together and call it a day? Turns out a lot of people aren’t joking anymore. Platonic co-buying, or friends teaming up to buy a home together, is on the rise with Gen Z women—and it’s one of our favorite housing trends in a long time. Oh, and the trend’s most famous cheerleader? Barbie.
Barbie’s moving—and her new spot is on Rightmove
This summer, Barbie partnered with Rightmove, the UK’s largest property platform, to list her brand-new DreamHouse as an actual (well, “actual”) property listing.
The listing leans all the way into the bit. It’s marked “SOLD STC,” priced at £274.99, and is described as “perfectly proportioned for residents 11.5 inches tall.” Her fuchsia-pink Malibu abode features an “external lift, because options matter” and a walk-in closet “because… Barbie,” plus, it’s only “a short walk to the coast”—the ideal dwelling “for anyone whose job is beach.”
An important detail to note: Barbie’s 2026 DreamHouse was designed with a bridge connecting it to a second house, so friends can live side by side. That’s not a random flourish. This time, Barbie’s Malibu DreamHouse was deliberately designed to reflect the real shift in how young people think about home ownership.
So what exactly is “platonic co-buying”? 
Platonic co-buying is when two or more people who aren’t married or romantically involved—typically friends, family members, or acquaintances—pool their finances to purchase a home together. Young people ask themselves, “Why should I wait when I have people I love right now?”
As their dreams of homeownership seem to slip further and further away, Millennial and Gen Z home buyers are taking matters into their own hands. The core motivation here is money: mortgage rates have nearly doubled since the pandemic, while wages haven’t kept pace. In 2025, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported that the typical age of first-time buyers reached 40-years-old—an all-time high.
Platonic co-buying emerged as young people’s way out of this mess. Combining income, they discovered, gets you more purchasing power. It’s easier to qualify for loans, and is a much faster route to ownership than going at it alone.
According to research Barbie and Rightmove commissioned, nearly half (48%) of the Gen Z and Millennial women surveyed said they’d consider buying a place with a friend. And it wasn’t just about their bank accounts: 56% said co-owning with a friend would boost their happiness, and 62% said it would give them a stronger sense of community.
Real friends are already doing it 
The BBC profiled four friends—Francesca, Graeme, Sonja, and Kieran, all 34—who bought a £650,000 flat in London together in 2022. “It didn’t feel like such a big step,” said Francesca. “If anything, moving in just the two of us felt like a bigger step.” Little did they know, more flat mates were on the way. In the years since, the two couples—friends for as long as they can remember—have each welcomed a little one, and they’re raising their growing families together under a single shared roof. “Whoever I tell about it, they always think it’s a great idea and they like it,” Kieran said. “But I do have to preface it with: ‘It’s not like a commune or anything. It’s communal living.’”
Then there’s Ayesha and Jasmin. They’d been friends for more than 15 years when life decided to hand them the same plot twist simultaneously. In 2025, both women found themselves newly divorced in Washington D.C., and were on the hunt for a place to land. Why not with each other? They decided to explore buying a home together in D.C., eventually settling on a five-bedroom, four-bathroom house for $905,000.
“It’s untraditional, but you take much bigger risks when you’re falling in love and getting married to someone who you’ve known for maybe three or four years,” says Ayesha. “We are raising our kids together. We’re partners in that and we are taking care of all five of these kids. We’re in it together.”
What’s on the ultimate DreamHouse wish list?
If you were designing your dream home—Barbie-style; no limits; pink as a non-negotiable—what would you put in it? Rightmove and Barbie decided to find out, and commissioned a survey of 2,000 women between the ages of 18 and 45. Their answers are below.
The Ultimate Top 10 DreamHouse Features:
- Large garden (44%)
- Walk-in wardrobe (39%)
- Swimming pool (34%)
- Open-plan kitchen/living space (31%)
- Spa or hot tub (25%)
- Home gym (24%)
- Library / reading room (20%)
- Home cinema (19%)
- Games room (16.5%)
- Joy room (a dedicated space for relaxation, hobbies, or self-care) (16%)
Look at the top of the list. A garden, an open-plan living space, and a spa, followed by a games room, a reading room, and a whole room for joy. Picture it: friends spilling out of the kitchen, snacks in hand, and heading straight to the garden on a lovely summer evening. Kids play nearby, someone is losing badly at Mario Kart inside. The thing about these features is that none of them are really for being alone. They’re built for sharing, for the nights when the house is full of people you love. And that says a lot about what young women actually want. It’s not just square footage. It’s space to gather, connect, and room for the people who make a house feel alive.
Why living with your people is good for you 
Psychologists have spent decades opining on the power of friendship. Science keeps finding the same thing: people with strong friendships tend to have lower blood pressure, healthier cholesterol, and a lower risk of heart disease and stroke. They also report being happier with their lives and feeling better about themselves. There’s no secret here. Healthy friendships give us something we all need: belonging and purpose.
As one licensed counselor recently put it: “We often think of friendship as a social luxury, but clinically it’s much closer to a protective health behavior.”
The idea of a “chosen family” comes up repeatedly in conversations about platonic co-buying. Humans select one another, deliberately choosing to play significant roles in each other’s lives in a partnership built on shared values, mutual respect, and care. Research increasingly shows that these support systems are central to belonging, especially for young adults building lives far away from where they grew up. This is how platonic co-buying goes from a risky financial gamble into a viable path to ownership: partnerships built on trust, commitment, and the deliberate mutual choice to show up for one another.
There’s even a documented “happiness spillover” effect: having a happy friend who lives within one mile of you raises your odds of being happy by 25%. Can you imagine what that number would be with them even closer?
A girl can Dream(House)
At the end of the day, the dream was never just the house (we’ll leave Barbie to enjoy her multi-level mansion). It was getting to choose who’s in it with you, and finding the people who make these four, very pink walls feel like home. Turns out, this wisdom has been Barbie’s since 1962, the year the DreamHouse premiered. At the time, women in the U.S. couldn’t even reliably get a mortgage in their own name, and it would take another 12 years before the Equal Credit Opportunity Act passed, which made it illegal to deny credit based on sex.
Now, Barbie and young people across the globe opt for platonic co-buying, and, in the process, are choosing themselves, their friends, and their financial futures.
