Boston Single Women are the Home Buying Group that can't be stopped
Solo home ownership? It’s for the girls. Despite the fact that we still make, on average, 80 cents to our male coworkers' dollar, single women far outpace their male counterparts in purchasing homes. A rising demographic since the 1980s, single women made up somewhere between 17% and 20% of home buyers in 2019. (Their single male counterparts accounted for around 9%.) They are one of the fastest-growing groups of homeowners today.
There’s plenty of evidence that this stems from choice: One 2018 report by Bank of America found that 73% of women value home ownership above getting married and having children, compared with 65% of men. But also worth noting is that men are incarcerated at nine times the rate women are, leaving, quite simply, fewer of them as possible buyers in their demographics.
Intrigued by this, House Beautiful spent the past six months talking to single women homeowners across the country, and then, in collaboration with Marie Claire, devised a survey for single female homeowners that would explore what, how, and why they are buying now.
WHO ARE THESE WOMEN?
Today, there are more women in the workplace than ever before. And they're buying homes no matter their salary. 23% of single women homeowners in our survey—the highest faction—reported earnings of between $25,000 and $49,999 a year, while 20% make $50,000-$74,999 and just 2% making over $200,000.
They also range in age. The median age of today’s home buyer is 50, indicating a swell of boomers buying alone, either as divorcées or having never been married. But there’s also a healthy group on the younger end of the spectrum that’s choosing to enter home ownership solo for the first time—29.6% of our survey-takers purchased when they were between 18 and 29; 26.2% between 30 and 39.