The CoBuy Suitability Score™

Is a home built for co-ownership?

America's homes were designed for one household: one primary suite, one kitchen, one front door.

Millions of us now buy together: friends, siblings, parents and adult kids, multigenerational households the market wasn't built for. The CoBuy Suitability Score grades any home, 0 to 100, on how well it can actually host shared ownership. Most homes flunk. The interesting part is finding the ones that don't.

Five tiers, in use since 2018, now on the grade scale everyone already reads.

How it works

1
We verify what's actually there.
Twelve questions no listing feed answers (below). If a capability can't be verified, it counts as absent: a listing's marketing can never inflate a score.
2
We map the home into living zones.
Every home resolves into zones, from a private bedroom up to a fully independent legal unit.
- Room (a private bedroom)
- Suite (a bedroom with its own bath)
- Quarters (a self-contained space with its own entrance)
- Dwelling (a near-independent unit with its own kitchen)
- Sovereign (a fully independent, legally rentable unit)
3
We test it against the real ways Americans co-own.
Two friends, a couple plus one, three to five adults, two households, a household plus a separate unit, two couples. The home gets one overall grade, and a grade for each way of living in it.

The idea traces to 2018, continuously refined. Today's rubric spans 11 dimensions: privacy · relative proportions · spatial distribution · accessibility · layout · kitchen & laundry · separate entrance/ADU · storage · amenities · parking · legal/occupancy.

How many Americans need homes like this? See the CoBuy Co-ownership Index™.

The 12 questions

1.How many separate areas could someone genuinely live in?
2.How many bedrooms, and which have their own private bath?
3.How many kitchens with a real cooking source (a range or cooktop; a microwave doesn't count)?
4.How many exterior entrances, usable without walking through someone else's space?
5.Do any doors between areas lock, from one side or both?
6.Can someone sleep and bathe on the entry level?
7.Is any part of the home a legal, permitted separate unit?
8.How many laundry setups, with real hookups?
9.How many living rooms or shared gathering spaces?
10.Could any space be converted into another bedroom or unit?
11.How many parking spaces, actually confirmed?
12.Do HOA or local rules limit unrelated occupants or renting?

Why scores rise with verification

Unverified capabilities count as absent, so a home's starting score, built on public listing data alone, is always a floor, never a ceiling. When an owner or a CoBuy-certified™ Pro verifies the answers, the score can only go up. That's consumer protection, not a gimmick: we never let a listing's own copy grade itself.

CoBuy-Suitable™ Homes

CoBuy has scored homes for co-ownership since 2018. The series relaunches with today's engine; the newest scoresheet:

Front exterior of the single-level Snoqualmie home at dusk, with a landscaped lawn and forested backdrop.

10350 348th Ave SE, Snoqualmie, WA

93.5 · Highly Suitable

1 Sovereign ADU · 1 Quarters · 2 Suites. One of the rare American homes genuinely built for shared ownership.

See the full scoresheet

Join the waitlist

The public scoring tool is coming. Join the waitlist and we'll notify you. Buying now? Talk to the CoBuy Wizard.

Join the waitlist for your score

Email only. We'll notify you when the public scoring tool opens.

Get your listing scored

A CoBuy Suitability Score scoresheet is collateral most agents in your market don't have yet: it names the buyers your listing actually fits and puts a citable grade behind it. Scoring is launching as a CoBuy-certified™ Pro benefit.

Become a CoBuy-certified Pro

Questions & answers

What is the CoBuy Suitability Score?

A 0-to-100 grade for how well a specific home can host co-ownership, computed from verified home capabilities across 11 dimensions and graded A to F.

What's the difference between a Suite and Quarters?

A Suite is a bedroom with its own bath inside the shared home. Quarters add a private entrance: a space someone can come and go from without crossing anyone else's.

Can I get a home or listing scored?

Scoring is launching through the CoBuy-certified Pro program; the newest scoresheet is live now. Homeowners can join the waitlist.

Homeowners can join the waitlist.

How to cite

Preferred citation: CoBuy Suitability Score™, CoBuy (cobuy.io/suitability-score).

Plain-text form: CoBuy Suitability Score, CoBuy, cobuy.io/suitability-score.

© 2026 CoBuy, Inc. Citation & reuse. You're welcome to cite these figures and grades for editorial, educational, or personal use with attribution to CoBuy and a clean, followable link to this page: standard hyperlinks only, with no nofollow, noreferrer, or sponsored qualifiers and no redirect wrappers. Commercial use is by license only: republication at scale, resale, syndication, or inclusion in any commercial product, dataset, or AI training corpus requires a license from CoBuy, Inc. Charts and scorecard graphics must keep the embedded source line intact. Licensing: contact.