In The Housing Market, Men Are Losers

Single women bought 1 in 6 homes in 2022

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Staff Writer

More single women swipe right on homeownership than single men. Owners of 1 in 8 homes in the U.S., it’s a group that can’t be ignored. Woman may earn 83 cents to every dollar a man makes, but they’re dominating the housing market and doing it on their own.

A LendingTree study using data from the U.S. Census Bureau found that single women are more likely than single men to own a home in 48 of 50 states.

In 2022, single women made up 17% of recent buyers, compared to 9% of men. For the past decade, these numbers have been fairly stable; single women have maintained between 15% and 19% of the buyer pool, and single men have maintained between 7% and 9%.

Jacob Channel, senior economist at LendingTree, said that this trend will most likely continue since there haven’t been any major demographic shifts, such as women’s graduation rates plummeting or men suddenly living longer than women.

It’s not a small gap, either. LendingTree says single women own about 10.76 million homes, while single men own about 8.12 million. Put another way, single women own an average of 12.9% of the owner-occupied homes in the U.S.

Beating the Odds

Prior to 1974, it was not legal for women to secure a mortgage without a male cosigner. Once that barrier was broken, women have outpaced single males as homebuyers since the National Association of Realtors (NAR) started tracking this data in 1981.

“We’ve seen this need for independence throughout the ‘80s generation into today,” said Jessica Lautz, NAR’s deputy chief economist and vice president of research. “Single women have really made it their mission to not be at the mercy of a landlord. They want their own spaces, and homeownership seems more important to their demographic.”

Lautz remarked also that single women are continuing to “surpass odds” in the housing market, still managing to hold onto their purchase power even though housing affordability hit a three-decade low in August last year. Lautz says that there is a laundry list of factors as to why single women are dominating: they live longer than men, marriage rates are declining, women are more likely to move closer to family and friends, they express a desire for stable homes to raise a family in potentially, and they make more sacrifices when it comes to their house wish lists.

“Historically, women tend to be caregivers, and they see a home as a place to either be a caregiver or as proximity to family,” Lautz said. “Their willingness to make sacrifices when it comes to their wants for a home speaks about the importance of homeownership to them.”

Lautz said that single women are also consistent in their buying behaviors and continue outperforming against the odds. “Their mortgage behaviors are almost the same as single men. 72% of single women financed compared to 73% of men,” Lautz said. “Even though they’re older in age as first-time buyers, single women of all ages are buying alone.”

“Women make less income, but they’re willing to make financial sacrifices to get a home.”

> Jessica Lautz, deputy chief economist and vice president of research, National Association of Realtors

Marketing To Single Women

Marketing to single ladies doesn’t have to be a completely different formula. Lautz says that LOs should approach women with the promise of ease and accessibility. “They need to take into account that women make less income, but they’re willing to make financial sacrifices to get a home, such as getting a second job or not taking a vacation,” she said. “What they want is to hear that an originator is willing to work with them.”

Channel, from Lending Tree, said that LOs also need to take into account the struggles that some women face during the homebuying process. “Women may have to stretch their budgets more in order to afford a home, and they may also face other, harder-to-quantify challenges, like dealing with sexist sellers,” he said. “Some lenders might not necessarily realize how much of a market there is for single women homebuyers, and, as a result, they might feel less inclined to seek out single women clients or cater their offerings to be more appealing to single women.”

To avoid issues such as sexism or hopelessness in the home buying process, Channel recommends anti-bias training to lenders. “People may not realize they have a bias until it’s actively pointed out to them and they’re given tools to help avoid it,” he said. “It’s also important for lenders to be sure that they’re properly highlighting different loan options that might be appealing to single buyers, like FHA loans, for example.”

Scott Cange, Delmar Mortgage’s chief marketing officer, says that while it’s tough to target mortgages specifically toward single women, an LO can use a different approach. “Something that we have seen via our Google analytics is that around 70% of people clicking on our website are women,” he said. “So that data allows us to really gauge our audience.”

Cange also said that everyone carries data, such as their gender, location, preferences, and interests. This can be used – especially by marketers – to reach their target audiences. “The biggest thing an LO can do is make sure they personalize their message towards their demographic, based on the data that they carry,” he said. “Everybody’s on a different journey. You [as an LO] have to be broad when it comes to public outreach, but your personal touch and attention will impact your clients.”