I agree with AspiringRationalist that most group houses are rented, and that renting makes sense for most groups. As the owner of a house that could be described as a rationalist(-aligned?) group house, however, I wanted to give a bit more background:
My wife and I bought the house 7 years ago, and everyone else pays us rent.
We knew that we wanted to live in some kind of communal setting long-term, and previously lived in a few.
We had one small child at the time we decided to buy a house, and we expected to continue to want to live with other people while raising children.
We liked the flexibility of having a place that was larger than we needed, where we could change our number of housemates over time as our family / needs changed.
We had been living in this part of this city for about 5 years, and were pretty confident that we would want to stay here.
I like working on houses and generally fixing things, which pushed us toward the buying end of the buy-rent continuum.
We know enough people in the area that we were pretty confident we could find people we wanted to live with, and keep that up long term.
I wouldn’t be interested in owning a house with a lot of other people: that is a bet that this particular arrangement of people are going to continue to want to live together in this place long term, and the more people you add the worse a bet that is.
I agree with AspiringRationalist that most group houses are rented, and that renting makes sense for most groups. As the owner of a house that could be described as a rationalist(-aligned?) group house, however, I wanted to give a bit more background:
My wife and I bought the house 7 years ago, and everyone else pays us rent.
We knew that we wanted to live in some kind of communal setting long-term, and previously lived in a few.
We had one small child at the time we decided to buy a house, and we expected to continue to want to live with other people while raising children.
We liked the flexibility of having a place that was larger than we needed, where we could change our number of housemates over time as our family / needs changed.
We had been living in this part of this city for about 5 years, and were pretty confident that we would want to stay here.
I like working on houses and generally fixing things, which pushed us toward the buying end of the buy-rent continuum.
We know enough people in the area that we were pretty confident we could find people we wanted to live with, and keep that up long term.
I wouldn’t be interested in owning a house with a lot of other people: that is a bet that this particular arrangement of people are going to continue to want to live together in this place long term, and the more people you add the worse a bet that is.