- Singles make up a growing portion of first-time buyers.
- This despite a persistent gender pay gap, high house prices and high mortgage rates.
- Experts say they are more willing to make sacrifices for ownership, buying small or living with family to save.
Single women are outpacing other groups as first-time home buyers in the US, with many successfully navigating a long gender wage gap, high home prices and high mortgage rates to block a purchase.
According to a recent report from the National Association of Realtors, single women accounted for 24% of first-time home buyers last year, while single men accounted for 11%.
The share of single women as a percentage of all first-time buyers has been on the rise, up five percentage points in the last year, the data show.
With lower average incomes, many female homeowners say they never imagined owning a home of their own.
But real estate experts and homeowners tell Business Insider that these dynamics may be exactly why women are more likely to pursue home ownership.
With social and economic factors working against them, high-income single women realize that building equity through home ownership will help set them up for long-term financial stability in the absence of a second stream of income. income from partner or spouse.
“If we look at this by race, by age, by generation, we see the same trend. Women just outnumber homeownership. And that’s something we’ve seen consistently in the data since we started tracking it in 1981,” NAR’s said. to Business Insider, Chief Economist Jessica Lautz. “This is something that has been important to generations of women.”
To be sure, women still face major challenges when buying a home, but it’s a sacrifice they seem increasingly willing to make, Lautz said.
They are more likely to settle for a smaller space or wait until they are older to buy than single men, with an average age for first-time buyers of 38 compared to 33 for men. according to NAR data for 2023.
Single women are also more likely to move in with friends or family before they buy to avoid paying rent, helping to save for longer. That was the case for Meghan, who told BI she moved in with her mother for a year after graduating from nursing school in 2018.
Things really started to fall into place, however, when she received a raise in her travel nurse salary after the COVID-19 pandemic drew huge demand for nurses across the country. That helped her save for a down payment, she said.
The 30-year-old jumped into home ownership in December 2022 with the help of a state-funded program for first-time buyers, which she used to buy a 575-square-foot apartment in Boston.
After moving in, she struggled a bit to make the $2,400 monthly mortgage payment while splitting time between working and finishing her nursing degree, but it was a decision she felt confident about regardless.
“By the skin of my teeth, I had a really tough year. My savings were already depleted from buying the house in the first place,” she said, adding that it got easier as her salary increased. grows again with her new degree.
Like Meghan, many women have increasingly pursued higher education in recent years, another area where they have outperformed men.
That could be another driver of their higher home ownership rates, First American deputy chief economist Odeta Kushi said.
“As these things—educational attainment, household incomes for women—continue to rise, it’s reasonable to expect it to follow suit as home ownership increases. It’s increasingly pursuing home ownership and reaping the benefits of of wealth creation for this group,” Khushi told BI.
Female homebuyers are also more likely to prioritize stability, Lautz said, making the security of a 30-year mortgage especially attractive as rents go through the roof.
Part of the increase in single female homeownership also could be that Americans in general are waiting longer to get married, Kushi said.
“We have the nursery rhyme, ‘first comes love, then comes marriage.’ And I feel like for singles, home ownership comes first,” Kushi said.
Meghan sees her home as a stable investment as prices continue to rise, even if she may eventually want to upgrade to a bigger home.
“I don’t think I’ll ever sell it. If anything, I’d just have someone move in, or just keep it and rent it out. I think owning property, especially in Boston, is invaluable, ” she. said.
For now, the women’s respective homes have proven to be everything they wanted, with security to call their own, they said.
Plus, it’s helping them feel more independent and confident than ever before.
“There’s all these things where I’m like, ‘Oh man, I’m a lot more capable than I thought I was,'” said Megan O’Neil, a 36-year-old who bought a house in Memphis in August. .
This has also changed her view on dating, she said.
“I can be very intimidating to some guys, but I need a partner. I don’t need someone to take care of me. I need a partner because I can do it myself,” she said.
