Our parents offered to help finance our first home if we split the profits 50-50. Here's how we make it work.

• Jared and Monika Rohrer are a millennial couple who recently bought their first house.
• When they didn't have enough in savings for a down payment, Jared Rohrer's parents assisted.

Last year, Jared and Monika Rohrer, both 29, decided it was time to buy their first home. Mortgage interest rates were at record lows, they wanted to build equity in something, and they were expecting their first child. There was one issue standing in their way, however: While they had some savings, they didn't have enough to cover a down payment.

So, they spoke to Jared's parents.

"My grandmother recently passed away and my parents owned her home, and when they sold it, they called us and said, 'Hey, we know you're looking at buying a home. We'd like to reinvest this money, so what if we worked out a deal with you?'" he told Insider.

The deal was that his parents would provide a 30% down payment for the home and cover the closing costs. Jared and Monika would cover the monthly mortgage payment, and then when they sell the home down the road, they would split the proceeds with his parents 50-50.

Enlisting the help of parents to buy a home is a common scenario. A 2020 survey by Loan Depot found that 77% of millennial and Gen Z homebuyers expected financial assistance from their parents to buy their first home, and 65% of parents 39 and older were willing to provide the help. Typical financial assistance included helping with a down payment, cosigning on a loan, or paying closing costs.

"We wanted help for a couple of reasons," Jared Rohrer, who cofounded the web development company Really Good Content with his wife, told Insider. "One, the down payment, but two, just to learn to navigate the whole situation. We wanted help as far as just understanding how the real-estate market worked."

Being business owners, Rohrer said they'd been working to pay off their credit-card debt and had prioritized putting extra cash into building the business, rather than saving for a home.

In April 2021, the Rohrers closed on their five-bedroom lakefront home in Orlando, Florida, for a sale price of $386,000. Jared Rohrer said he and his dad are on the mortgage and signed a legal agreement, which was required by their lender to outline the deal's structure.

"It wasn't necessarily for accountability because we didn't trust each other, but more or less, just because the bank wanted it," he explains.

Rohrer and his wife now live in the home with their six-week-old daughter, Serenity, and their golden retriever, Misha. His parents live in California, but they recently purchased a home across the lake that they plan to either turn into an Airbnb rental or live in once they retire.

The monthly mortgage payment of about $1,700 is almost the same as what they were paying to rent a much smaller apartment, Rohrer said. While they have no trouble paying the mortgage, he does worry that if something happened and they couldn't, it could cause tension.

"We're legally bound together," he said. "They're in a pickle, too, if we can't pay. So there's certainly the added tension, and if it ever came to that, it would be really awkward."

All the extra space is the best part of being a homeowner, Rohrer said, but homeownership also comes with lots of responsibility and expenses. Since moving in, he said they've used their savings to purchase a washer and dryer, install a new air conditioning unit and a backyard fence, and repair plumbing.

"Everything total probably ended up costing us like $6,000," he said. "When you live in apartments, it's somebody else's building, so they handle any issue. We're responsible for everything now."

Compared to other generations, younger millennials — ages 22 to 30 — made up a smaller share of homebuyers in the past year at 14%, according to the National Association of Realtors. Many have grappled with competing with other buyers amid the high home prices, while also paying off student loans and other debt and saving for a down payment.

So, any help younger homebuyers can get, Rohrer said to go for it.

"I would say if somebody has to partner with their parents or with their friends to buy a house, 100% go for it, because it's worth getting the equity," he said. "It's not taught how to develop wealth, how to save so that you can buy a home. A lot of people in our age bracket don't have the income, and they're just not taught how to save properly because we have such a spend culture."

If you're buying a home with your parents, Rohrer said to be sure to have a legal agreement — no matter how tight-knit your relationship is.

"All of a sudden, when money gets involved, people's dirty sides can come out," Rohrer told Insider. "So I would just highly advise that anybody that does do this, to have an agreement in place that everybody has signed that's legal and binding."