CoBuy-certified™ Pro Fred Glick: What Co-buyers Miss

Fred Glick has spent 40 years in real estate and mortgage lending. He's seen co-buyer deals go smoothly—and watched them blow up in escrow when groups skipped the hard conversations early.

Now a CoBuy-certified™ Pro, Fred works with co-buyers across California, Washington, Colorado, Texas, and other U.S. markets through Arrivva, the firm he co-founded. We asked him what co-buyers get wrong—and how to get it right.

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What brings people to co-buying?

Life pushes people into the same practical funnel: commitment momentum with a partner, rent feeling like burning cash, wanting space or a yard, or one person qualifying while the other brings cash.

But here's what Fred sees them miss early on:

They don't talk about the breakup scenario. "If we split, who gets to stay? How do we decide the buyout price? What if neither can afford the mortgage alone?" Fred says. "If you don't write an exit plan while you like each other, you're volunteering to write one when you don't."

They confuse "we're both paying" with "we're both building equity fairly." Down payments, closing costs, repairs—these are rarely equal. People quietly track it in their heads, and it becomes emotional compound interest.

They don't understand how title choices change outcomes. "Both our names on it" is not a plan. How you hold title affects inheritance, taxes, creditor exposure, and what happens if one dies.

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Why is co-buying more common—and more complicated?

Co-buying used to mean "married couple, simple story." Now it's friends, siblings, unmarried couples, parents with adult kids, investors with occupants.

That multiplies the edge cases:

• More parties = more exit scenarios. One person wants to sell, one wants to stay, one loses a job, one moves. Now you're doing partnership law with a roof.
• Money is rarely equal. Different down payments, uneven monthly contributions—without a written agreement, people drift into "I think I'm owed…" territory.
• Mortgage liability is joint-and-several. Even if you "agreed" one person pays utilities and the other pays mortgage, the lender doesn't care about your vibes.

Fred's summary: "Co-buying rises because it's one of the few remaining ladders into ownership. It gets complicated because modern co-buying looks less like marriage and more like a small business with emotional side-quests."

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How does dual real estate and mortgage expertise help?

Most co-buyers work with an agent who hands them off to a lender—two separate conversations, two different pictures of what's possible.

Fred does both. Here's why that matters:

The budget is set the way underwriting actually works. Not "what you hope the payment is," but the real all-in number: HOA dues, taxes, insurance, reserves, income type, and debt-to-income reality—especially when multiple people contribute in different ways.

The co-buy structure is designed early. Who's on title vs. who's on the loan. How unequal down payments are handled. Decision rules for repairs. The exit plan.

"Because we do both real estate and mortgage," Fred says, "the plan we design is both legally coherent and loan-compliant."

Deal-killers get flagged before they waste time. Condos and HOAs can be underwriting minefields. Insurance and condition issues create lender requirements. Fred catches these early—before inspections, appraisals, and lost weeks.

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What's the biggest risk when alignment happens too late?

"You accidentally build a slow-motion hostage situation," Fred says.

Once you're on title and on a mortgage, your "group project" is legally welded together. If expectations diverge after closing, you don't just have conflict—you have conflict with leverage:

• Deadlock: One person wants to sell, one refuses.
• Financial bleed: Repairs hit; someone "can't right now," and resentment becomes the second mortgage.
• Credit damage: One person stops paying, everyone gets punched.
• Forced sale: Partition actions, attorneys, and a lot of money spent to re-learn "we should've talked about this."

"The real risk isn't buying the wrong house," Fred says. "It's buying the right house with the wrong operating system."

How he helps groups avoid it:

1. Run a pre-mortem before shopping. Pretend it's 18 months later and the arrangement is failing. List the reasons. This flushes out the stuff people avoid saying.
2. Define a decision system, not just intentions. What requires unanimity vs. majority? What's delegated? You want rules like a tiny constitution.
3. Put money contributions on rails. Who pays what monthly? Is the down payment unequal? Create a house reserve funded monthly. Decide what happens if someone is late.
4. Build an exit plan with a buyout formula. Sale triggers, buyout method, timeline to refinance, mandatory listing date if no buyout.

"If you don't write this now," Fred says, "you're agreeing to improvise it later while angry."

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What should co-buyers figure out before touring?

Fred's answer is direct: "Lock down the stuff that prevents 'we love this house' from steamrolling into 'why are we in court.'"

The non-negotiables:

• Max purchase price and max monthly payment (including taxes/insurance/HOA)
• Minimum cash buffer after closing
• Time horizon: 3 years vs. 10 changes everything
• Deal breakers: commute, schools, noise, HOA rules

The money map:

• Down payment: who's putting in how much, and is that a gift, loan, or equity?
• Monthly costs: who pays what?
• Repairs: how are big expenses handled?
• Reserve fund: how much goes into the "house account" monthly?

Ownership and control:

• Who will be on title and who will be on the mortgage?
• Ownership shares: 50/50 or proportional?
• Decision rules: what requires unanimous consent?

The exit plan:

• When someone can force a sale vs. must offer a buyout first
• Buyout price method
• What happens if someone stops paying

"If you can't explain your exit plan in 60 seconds," Fred says, "you don't have one."

His meta-rule: "Touring homes creates dopamine and urgency. You want the boring decisions made before dopamine shows up with a clipboard."

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How does structured intake fit into your work?

"Structured intake like CoBuy Wizard becomes the 'boring superpower' layer," Fred says. "The part that prevents co-buying from turning into a vibes-based legal experiment."

It fits his workflow in three ways:

It becomes the front door—before tours. Instead of starting with "What neighborhoods do you like?", Fred starts with budget rails, roles, money contributions, exit plans, and living rules. The first live meeting is about resolving disagreements, not discovering them mid-offer.

It turns messy human stuff into clean outputs. A good intake produces artifacts: a co-buyer profile, budget and cash plan, red-flag report, and a draft term sheet an attorney can formalize.

It upgrades the process from transaction to partnership. Pre-mortem to surface hidden assumptions. Alignment scoring to spot weak links. Scenario testing. Trigger-based rules.

What changes in day-to-day work:

• Tours start later, but offers get stronger
• Fewer blow-ups in escrow (most escrow blow-ups are pre-escrow problems)
• Cleaner collaboration with lenders and attorneys
• Better client experience—co-buyers feel calmer because decisions aren't improvisational

"The blunt truth," Fred says: "Co-buying fails when people discover they're not aligned after they've welded themselves together financially. Structured intake is the wrench that tightens everything before the weld."

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What's the one thing you'd want co-buyers to get right early?

"Get the exit plan right early. Not the neighborhood. Not the paint. Not even the split of the electric bill. The exit plan."

Fred's reasoning: "The moment you co-buy, you're not just buying a house—you're creating a legally binding partnership with a six-figure lever attached. If the relationship, finances, or life plans change (and they will), the exit plan determines whether you glide out cleanly or spend months in deadlock, bleeding cash, wrecking credit, and paying attorneys."

A good early exit plan has three parts:

1. Triggers: What events force a buyout or sale (job move, breakup, nonpayment, death, partner moving in)
2. Price and process: How buyout value is set and the timeline to refinance
3. Fallback: If no buyout happens, the home must be listed by X date

"If co-buyers nail that upfront," Fred says, "everything else—budget, roles, house rules—gets 10x easier, because nobody's subconsciously terrified of being trapped."

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