CAROLINE BIANCHI
Highway access hot

An increasing number of single women are snagging a piece of the American dream. According to a national Realtors’ group, the number of homebuyers nationwide who are single women is on the rise.

More than 20 percent of those who purchased a home during the first quarter of the year were single women, according to the National Association of Realtors’ 2003 Profile of Homebuyers & Sellers, which was released last week. Single women purchased approximately one in five homes sold early in 2003, outpacing single men who purchased just more than one in 10 homes, according to NAR. “We have seen single women consistently buying at double the rate of single men,” said Walt Molony, senior public affairs associate for NAR.

The profile, which is based on a survey of homebuyers who purchased a home during the first quarter of the year, reflects a trend that was first spotted in the mid-1990s.

“In 1997 and 1999, single women accounted for 18 percent of the transactions,” said Molony. There was a slight dip in 2001, when only 15 percent of the nation’s homebuyers were single women, but that was most likely due to the recession when “single-income households were a little more reluctant than dual-income households to make home purchases,” according to Molony.

Molony cautioned that seasonal buying patterns could be inflating the 2003 numbers a little, because while prior NAR surveys were based on an entire year’s sales transactions, the most recent survey drew upon first-quarter home sales only. But Molony said the numbers of unmarried women buying homes has been trending upward.

Opportunity Arrival

Traditionally, the majority of homebuyers have been married couples, according to NAR, but that has been changing. In 2003, for example, 59 percent of homebuyers were married couples, a considerable drop from 1995 when 70 percent of the nation’s homebuyers were married.

Low mortgage interest rates, women’s rising incomes, high divorce rates and special mortgage programs are some of the factors that may be allowing more single women to break into the homebuying market, according to industry sources.

Karen Freeman, a mortgage originator and a vice president of Fitchburg-based Fidelity Bank, said looser mortgage underwriting guidelines and the lowest interest rates in history have been a critical boost for many buyers, including single women.

“A lot of underwriting guidelines are based on credit scoring, so if someone has kept good credit … it has opened up a lot of opportunities for them,” said Freeman, who estimates that she has worked with as many as two dozen single women this year.

Freeman has encountered single women who currently own condominiums who are seeking to upgrade into a single-family home because of the low mortgage interest rates. But she’s also dealt with unmarried first-time homebuyers who “have been waiting for the opportunity to arrive for them to save the money or have the interest rate low enough that they qualify” to purchase a home.

Bay State Realtors interviewed by Banker & Tradesman said they have noticed a gradual increase in the number of unmarried women buying homes. The NAR statistics don’t surprise Rhonda Sprague, owner of Harvard Realty in Harvard.

“Anecdotally, we’re seeing many more single women now than we did before,” said Sprague, whose firm serves communities west of Boston, including Bolton, Acton, Lancaster and Ayer.

Sprague said her office, a member of The Realty Guild, is currently working with four single female clients who are in the process of purchasing a home. Most of the single women Sprague has worked with are professionals with advanced degrees and have been previously married.

“We see more single women buying than single men,” she said.

Two decades ago it was “virtually unheard” of for a single woman to walk into a real estate office searching for a home to buy on her own, said Carolyn Chodat, broker-owner of Classic Properties in Medway and Milford. Back then, it wouldn’t have been unusual for many brokers to ask a woman who was searching for a house whether her husband was also going to view it, she said.

Today, that’s changed as women’s earning power and financial stability has risen.

“I think women have achieved more recognition in the workforce and higher salaries and therefore they have … [a] better understanding of financial planning. I see many more women who are much more astute at financial planning than they were in the early ’90s,” said Chodat.

Chodat agrees with Freeman that the interest rates are an important factor. “Women are feeling more comfortable financially with the lower interest rates to take on that responsibility [of buying a home],” she said.

While most of the homebuyers Chodat encounters in her region are dual-income households, or couples, because of the high home prices in the MetroWest area, she has seen a “subtle” increase in single women searching for homes.

Many of them are professional women and some are divorced mothers of teen-agers who are searching for single-family homes, while single women without children will often consider condominiums, she said.

Caroline Bianchi of Re/Max Acclaim in Auburn, a past president of the state’s Women’s Council of Realtors, said she has seen an increase of about 10 percent to 15 percent in single women homebuyers from two years ago.

Bianchi attributes the increase to changing marital patterns, including higher divorce rates and the fact that women are getting married at an older age. But high rents and the shortage of available apartments in the Worcester region have also convinced many single women to purchase a home, she said.

“If they’re looking to pay $1,400 or $1,500 a month for a decent rental they’d rather put [that money] into buying a new home,” said Bianchi.

Many of the single women seeking to buy a home in Worcester region are in their late 20s to 30s, according to Bianchi, and they seek single-family homes that are near major highways.

“Major [highway] access is important to them,” she said.

Nationally, more than 50 percent of the single female homebuyers responding to the NAR survey owned a home before, while 45 percent were first-time buyers. Most of the women were between the ages of 25 and 54, with 27 percent falling between the ages of 25 to 34 years of age. Some 25 percent were between the ages of 35 to 44, and 24 percent were 45 to 54. The median age for all homebuyers in the nation, regardless of sex, was 40 years old, while in the Bay State it was 39.

More than 70 percent of the women reported that no children under 18 lived in their households, while 15.4 percent responded that one child under 18 lived with them.

The NAR survey also showed that nearly half of the single women purchasing homes earned less than $45,000. About 27 percent earned under $35,000 and another 21 percent earned $35,000 to $44,999.

The median income for all buyer-households was $66,300, according to NAR, and $54,800 for first-time buyers. In the Bay State, the median income of buyer-households was much higher at $75,700, and $59,500 for first-time buyers.