GuidePartner accounts
Splitting affordability
How shared housing costs are divided between you and a linked partner, and how to change the split.
"We'll just split everything 50/50" is where most couples start, and for plenty of couples it is where the conversation should end too. But two incomes are rarely identical, and pretending otherwise can quietly make one partner's version of affordable stop being true. Splitting affordability is how you set and change the way shared housing costs are divided, instead of the app assuming an even share is always the fair one.
Where the split lives
The split is one percentage representing your share of the shared housing costs, and you set it from your finances section once you are linked with someone. It starts at an even 50/50 the moment you link, and either of you can change it whenever you like, since it is not locked to whoever got there first.
Changing it applies everywhere by default, so every property the two of you are looking at uses that same split for the mortgage and council tax and bills, unless a particular property has an override of its own.
How it affects your score
Your share of the split, combined with your own commitments and take-home pay, is what actually gets compared against your ideal leftover target to produce your individual affordability score. Your partner's score is calculated the same way, from their share and their own numbers, so a change to the split moves both of your scores in opposite directions at once, more for you means less for them, and vice versa.
Quick note
A split that improves your own score by pushing more of the cost onto your partner has not solved affordability, it has just moved the pressure across the table. Worth agreeing on together rather than one of you quietly tuning it in your own favour.
Property-level overrides
Your default split is a starting point rather than a rule every property has to obey. Any single property can override it without touching the default you use everywhere else, and there is a worked example of that on the linking with a partner page. It is there for the one house that needs a different arrangement, so you can try that arrangement out without renegotiating the split across everything else you are comparing.