For starters, whether married or not, anyone looking to roll the dice and buy a home in this market of declining hopes and falling prices needs to think through all the potential pitfalls.

This is a market where it's a lot easier to buy into than to sell out of.

You could buy a home for $500,000 and find out a year later it's worth only $425,000.

Basically, you are making what could amount to a decades-long financial commitment to a piece of property - no five years and out for you and your honey.

But what happens if things don't work out between you and your significant other?

Certainly, splitting up is an all too often sad fact of life that most of us would rather not dwell on too deeply. Half of all marriages end in divorce and unmarried couples face all the same pressures.

Ironically, after buying a house together, you may find splitting up is a lot harder to do than if you had gotten hitched.

There's a legal mechanism for dividing up assets - it's called divorce. It may have gotten a bad name over the years, but it's a legally recognized way to extricate yourself - financially and emotionally - from a long-term relationship gone bad.

For unmarried couples taking the plunge into home ownership, the only roughly comparable thing would be to hire a lawyer and hammer out a series of breakup agreements.

But really, how likely is that to happen with those unmarried couples who blunder into home ownership, buoyed by fuzzy hopes that buying a house together will somehow cement their relationship?

If you are not ready to really commit yourself to a relationship with something more than sweet nothings, then you should forget about buying a home.