Celebrating Single Women Home Buyers Kicking Glass!

As unbelievable as this sounds, History shows us that it was not until 1974 that women were legally protected to obtain a mortgage without a co-signer. Before the passage of the Fair Housing Act’s prohibitions against “sex” discrimination in housing-related transactions and the protections of the Equal Credit Opportunity Act, it was commonplace for a widow to need a male relative as a co-signer. Under federal law, women had no legal recourse for this or any other lending discrimination.

By 1981 the National Association of Realtors had begun Profiling Buyers and Sellers and a stunning statistic was uncovered… and an amazing finding was made: single women outpaced single men in the housing market. In fact, single women were second only to married couples. Fast forward to today and single women home buyers are a major force. They purchase homes at almost twice the rate of single men.

Single women are surpassing all odds in the housing market and purchasing homes with lower household incomes in an increasingly unaffordable housing market. There are a lot of moving parts that go into this discussion but in summary, single women are more focused on making a home purchase happen, wish to be close to friends and family, are willing to make personal sacrifices and embody the desire to create a home for their extended family in the form of multi-generational homes, often including children, parents and siblings.

Single women can encounter many obstacles when trying to purchase a home. In addition to the current housing shortage and the hyper competitive market that has created, they generally have less income than their male counter parts. Given lower household incomes, women do make more financial sacrifices when purchasing. In fact, Forty-five percent of women make financial sacrifices when purchasing a home. Common financial sacrifices include cutting spending on:

Non-essential goods

Entertainment

Clothes

Taking on a second job

Women are also more likely to move in with friends or family before purchasing to avoid or rental payments

These sacrifices only underscore how important homeownership is to women. These sacrifices may add up and happen over a number of years, which also may contribute to the slightly higher age at which women purchase their home.

A Program Emerges

After more than 20 years in the Real Estate Business, the Adams Home Team has worked with and assisted a large number of single women in achieving their home ownership goals. It often isn’t an easy road to follow since there are always possible financing issues, potential legal challenges (in the case of divorce), probate issues in the case of a death, medical service needs for the elderly and educational requirements when children are involved. This is just the short list.

Being a Real Estate Team consisting of single women, single men, mothers and fathers and having experienced a great deal of the obstacles single women face either directly or indirectly, we feel specifically empowered to help single women attain their goals. To that end we have created a support program designed to make this Journey as stress free as possible. This requires deep industry knowledge, many contacts, compassion and patience! With a nod towards the sacrifices that will be made, the enduring focus and motivation to win, and blasting through Glass Ceilings…We call it –