Brothers and sisters, cousins, friends - a growing number of people are getting together to buy their first home. Fiona Tyrrell reports.

For those who can't afford to buy a house alone, joining forces with friends or family is an option more and more people are taking to get a foot on the property ladder.

Although it may not be as straightforward as buying with a spouse or partner, sharing the financial burden with a friend or family is the smart way of buying a house you wouldn't be able to afford on your own.

"We were sick of paying rent to pay for someone else's mortgage so we have decided to do it ourselves," explains Linda Carmody, 28, from Tralee who is on the hunt to buy a house with two female friends in the Ballincollig-Ovens area of Cork.

"We have been friends since we were 12 and have been living together for a while.

"Between us we are paying €900 a month, which is the equivalent of a mortgage. None of us was in a position to do it on our own so we decided to do it together."

The cost of housing is making it difficult for people to buy on their own and, if people can't buy a house, they are buying half a house or even a third of a house.

All sorts of groups are linking up to purchase together - friends, siblings, cousins, work colleagues.

For Kerry McGovern, 27, and her brother Caimin, 30, the decision to buy a house together came when they realised that living with family could be preferable to living with strangers.

Both had been in the market for a home and planned to rent out a room to help pay their mortgages.

However, after looking around the market they realised that by pairing up they could afford a better house and not be forced to rent out a room, Kerry explains.

Living with a sibling has its advantages, they said.

"We know each other very well and we obviously have lived together before and, because we are brother and sister, we have natural referees - our parents," says Caimin.

The duo bought a three-bed terrace house in Swords over three years ago for £140,000 (€177,800).

Both view the venture purely as a short-term investment and have taken out a 20-year mortgage on the house. They plan to sell it on in a few years' time and use the proceeds to help them buy separately. "We had one deposit and want to turn it into two as soon as possible," Caimin explains.

If two people makes the purchase of a house more attainable, three people makes it even more affordable.

For Carl O'Brien, his brother Rory and friend Fergus Casey it was simply a case of "doing the maths" to figure out that taking out a mortgage was much smarter than paying rent.

The trio "scraped together" the deposit and bought a three-bed end-of-terrace house in Kilmainham, Dublin 8 for £195,000 (€247,650).

Aside from a couple of rows over soft furnishings and a few too many trips to DIY stores at the weekends for the lads' liking, the venture has worked out well and they estimate that the house has increased in value by €120,000.

However, the life span of a co-ownership can be quite short because people's priorities change, Carl warns.

Within nine months of the purchase, one of the partners moved to San Francisco and within a year another moved to the UK, leaving Carl living with two lodgers.

Now the three partners are at a crossroads and are trying to choose between one buying out the other or selling up the house and splitting it three ways.

Keeping everything 50-50 and negotiating terms before the big purchase is the advice from friends John Kennedy and Marc O'Riain who bought a three-bed terraced for £172,000 (€218,440) in Dublin 8.

"We were both looking to buy at the same time and we realised that we could only afford to buy a one-bed box but, if we pooled our resources, we could get a house, which is a much sounder investment," says John.

Mark eventually moved to Cork and John lived with tenants for a while until he started to look for a new house with his fiancee.

They decided to put the house on the market in the middle of last year and an impressive 210 people viewed the house in the space of four weeks. A bidding war ensued with six interested parties. The final bid was for €318,000.

At this point John and Erica decided that the house was the best deal on the market and matched the final offer, buying Marc's share out. "Buying a house with a friend is the ultimate way of mixing business and pleasure, but it worked out very well for us," Marc concludes.