The sofa arrived on a Saturday in your first month. Somebody found it, somebody else paid for it, and everyone sent a transfer that afternoon — or meant to. Two years later, that somebody is moving to another city, standing in the hallway with a van outside, asking a completely reasonable question: does she get anything back for the sofa?
Nobody knows. Nobody wrote anything down. And a €600 piece of furniture that now looks every bit its age has quietly become the most emotionally charged object in the house.
Why furniture is the one shared cost nobody plans for
Rent and bills are easy to think about because they repeat. They arrive monthly, everyone sees them, and if the split is wrong you find out within four weeks.
Furniture behaves in the opposite way, and that's what makes splitting furniture costs with housemates so quietly explosive. It's a one-off payment, usually made by whoever happened to have money that week. It loses value fast, but nobody agrees on how fast. And unlike a bill, it stays — long after the person who paid for it has gone.
So the conversation never happens at the moment of purchase, when everyone is cheerful and the delivery is coming Saturday. It happens at move-out, when goodwill is at its lowest point of the entire tenancy.
Furniture is the only thing you split that you can't actually split. Everything else divides neatly into four. A sofa divides into one sofa and three disappointed people.
The three ways to buy furniture together
There are only three models that work. Pick one per item, out loud, before you pay.
- One person buys it and owns it. Whoever pays keeps it, uses it, and takes it when they leave. Nobody else contributes a cent. This is by far the cleanest option, and it's the right default for any house where people are likely to leave at different times.
- The house kitty buys it. Everyone pays into a shared pot each month, and anything bought from that pot belongs to the house rather than to a person. It stays when an individual goes. Ideal for long-running houses with rotating members.
- Split the cost, with a buy-out agreed in advance. Everyone pays a share, and you decide at the point of purchase what a leaver gets back later. Fine for big items nobody would ever want to transport — a dining table, a washing machine — as long as the exit rule exists from day one.
Most well-run houses mix all three: personal items owned by individuals, communal essentials owned by the house, and a couple of big-ticket purchases split with a written buy-out rule.
Write down who owns what — on the day you buy it
The model matters less than the record. A house that splits everything and writes it down will have a calmer move-out than a house with a perfect philosophy and no list.
Keep one running furniture list, and give each item four things:
- What it is, and what it cost — with the receipt or order confirmation attached.
- Who paid — and how much each person actually contributed, not what they promised.
- Who owns it — one named person, or "the house".
- What happens if the owner leaves — one sentence is enough.
This is exactly the kind of thing an app like Crew is good at, because the purchase gets logged next to every other shared expense and the receipt sits alongside the lease and the move-in inventory. Two years later, nobody is scrolling back through a group chat trying to prove they paid €150 towards a bookshelf.
While you're at it, photograph everything the landlord provided on the day you move in. Furniture that came with the flat is a deposit question, not a housemate one — and the two get confused constantly.
What happens to the sofa when someone moves out
When a shared item outlives its co-owner, there are three fair endings.
The replacement buys them out. The incoming housemate pays the leaver for their share at today's value and inherits it. The neatest outcome by a mile: the leaver gets money, the house keeps its furniture, and nothing gets carried down three flights of stairs.
The remaining housemates buy them out. Same principle, split between whoever's staying. Works well when there's no replacement yet.
It depreciates to zero. Agree upfront that shared items are worth nothing after a set lifespan — three years is a sensible number for soft furniture, five for solid wood and appliances. After that, they simply belong to the house.
Whichever you choose, value it at what it would genuinely sell for secondhand today, not at what it cost new. Two-year-old flat-pack furniture is worth roughly a quarter of its original price. Nobody should get a payout larger than they'd get from actually selling the thing.
The big, awkward items
Appliances stay with the house. A washing machine, a dishwasher, anything plumbed or built in — never register these to an individual. Somebody's washing machine leaving on a Tuesday is not a scenario your house should be capable of producing.
The TV usually belongs to one person, and everyone uses it. That's fine. Just say it out loud early, so its departure is expected rather than experienced as a betrayal.
Mattresses are never shared and never inherited. Not a financial rule. Just a rule.
The landlord's furniture isn't yours to remove. If you want that ugly armchair out of the living room, get written permission and store it somewhere dry. A damp garage will cost you more than the replacement did.
The thirty-second conversation that prevents all of this
Before any shared purchase big enough to matter — pick a threshold, €50 a person is a good one — three questions, asked before you click buy:
Who's paying? Who owns it? What happens to it if they leave?
Thirty seconds of mild awkwardness while everyone's still excited about the new sofa — instead of a miserable twenty minutes in a hallway two years later.
A well-furnished shared house isn't the one with the nicest sofa. It's the one where everybody already knows whose it is.
Frequently asked questions
Who owns furniture that housemates bought together?
Legally, in most places, everyone who contributed money owns a share of it, which is exactly why it becomes a problem — a sofa cannot be divided into four. In practice the only thing that matters is what you agreed at the time of purchase, so the useful move is to decide at checkout whether the item belongs to one person or to the house. If you never agreed, the fallback most houses settle on is that whoever paid the largest share keeps it and buys out the others at secondhand value.
How do you value shared furniture when someone moves out?
Use what the item would actually sell for secondhand today, not what it cost new. For most flat-pack and soft furniture that means somewhere around 20 to 40 percent of the original price after a couple of years, and close to nothing after three or four. A simple rule that avoids the whole argument is straight-line depreciation: agree a lifespan of about three years for soft furniture and five for solid wood or appliances, and pay out the leaver's share of whatever value is left.
Should housemates split the cost of a sofa or should one person buy it?
If your household is likely to change within a year or two, one person buying and owning it outright is far cleaner, because there is nothing to unwind when someone leaves. Splitting the cost makes sense for long-running houses and for items nobody would ever want to transport, like a dining table or a washing machine. The one thing you should never do is split the cost without agreeing in advance what a leaver gets back.
How can housemates keep track of who paid for what?
Keep one running list of shared purchases with the item, the buyer, the amount, the date and the agreed owner, and store the receipts somewhere the whole house can reach them. An app like Crew works well for this because the furniture purchase gets logged alongside the rest of the shared expenses and the receipt sits next to the lease and the inventory, so nobody is scrolling through two years of group chat trying to prove who paid for the bookshelf.
Can you get rid of furniture the landlord provided?
Not without asking. Anything listed on the inventory has to be returned in the same condition at the end of the tenancy, so removing it is a deposit risk even if you think the replacement is nicer. If the landlord agrees to you storing it, get that in writing, photograph the item before it goes into storage, and keep it somewhere dry — a sofa that comes back out of a damp garage costs more than the one you bought to replace it.
