Forget flowers, candy or champagne. What a single woman wants today is her own home, and she's not waiting for a man to provide it for her. "It's like mink coats were in the '80s," says Michael Bastian, spokesman for Sotheby's International. "Women stopped waiting for men to give furs to them, and started buying them for themselves."
According to the most recent census statistics, single women own 13.8 million homes, more than double the number they did 25 years ago. Women, including single mothers, make up 22.5 percent of all homeowners, a slight rise from a decade ago. By contrast, single men comprise only 12.6 percent.In part, this is because women tend to live longer than men and inherit the family house. But according to the National Association of Home Builders, single women also outpace men as new-home buyers, despite the fact that they generally have lower incomes. One out of every 10 new homes is purchased by a single woman or mother. Only 6 percent of new-home buyers are single men or fathers. "Women tend to be better savers than men," says association economist Gopal Ahluwalia. "Also, having their own nest seems to be more important to them."
But even though women may be better savers and have sterling credit records, they still may have a more difficult time buying a house than single men or married couples.
Take Laura Bennett. The 43-year-old Orlando marketing consultant has purchased two houses on her own - one recently, the other when she was only 30.
Though she has a strong credit record and employment history - and makes $75,000 a year - Bennett felt frustrated both times she applied for mortgages. Each time, lenders asked her to supply reams of documentation - more, she suspects, than she would be asked to provide if she were part of a couple or a single man.
"They wanted every check stub - I had to prove everything over and over," she says. "I never knew if it was part of the regular lending process, or if it was because I was a single woman."
With each purchase, Bennett had to switch mortgage companies several times, losing her application fees, before she found lenders who didn't overload her with paperwork. "I'm surprised that no one seemed to consider the fact that I've no children or other obligations as positives. Even though I easily could afford the homes I bought, people shook their heads and said, `If only you had a second income. . . . ' "
Mary Harker, a Dallas real-estate agent, says her clients sometimes face the same sort of runaround Bennett did. "I always try to steer my single women buyers to young loan officers, who have a bit more sensitivity. The over-50-year-olds still can be quite misogynistic," she says.
And some women get even.
In 1972, Emily Card won a teaching job at the University of Wisconsin. Her pay: a then-respectable $12,000 a year. Recently divorced, she had been the family's sole breadwinner during her marriage. But when she tried to obtain credit cards and a mortgage to buy a $30,000 house, she was turned down.
Card sued and won, but, ironically, she never moved into her new house. Instead, she took a different position in Washington, where she wound up working on the creation of the 1974 Equal Credit Act, which bars credit discrimination based on sex.
Now a successful Santa Monica, Calif., attorney, Dr. Card has written three books for women on managing finances. She has also bought and sold several houses both as investments and as residences. Although single women seeking mortgages don't face the overt discrimination Dr. Card did years ago, she says they still encounter subtle "ego hits." And women hassled by lenders aren't likely to sue, Dr. Card claims: "They get disheartened and go to another lender or accept lesser terms."
Alex Sachs, a spokesman for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, says that allegations of discrimination in housing based on gender have fallen since the Fair Housing Act was passed in 1968. Currently, only 1,300 out of 10,000 cases HUD handles each year involve gender-discrimination complaints.
But single women aren't getting any special hand-holding from lenders either. Spokespersons for the Mortgage Bankers of America, the Federal National Mortgage Association and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corp. all say they're unaware of any special mortgage programs geared specifically toward single women, although there are outreach marketing efforts to low- and moderate-income people and to minorities.
A few new-home builders, however, are actively pursuing the single-female market. Randall Lewis, an Upland, Calif., builder, has hosted mixers and chapter meetings of Great Expectations, a dating service, and Parents Without Partners at the clubhouse of a townhouse project in Rancho Cucamonga. "We're trying to attract schoolteachers tired of paying rent," says Lewis, who builds about 2,500 homes a year.
And Jim Murar, chairman of Re-cre-Ac-tions Group of Companies in Newport Beach, Calif., says he has focused his entire company's efforts on meeting the housing needs of single women and other "nontraditional" buyers, such as single men, childless couples and single parents. "Most other builders are concentrating on building a 2,000-square-foot house for a family buyer," he says. "We're taking the market that they're overlooking."
Murar's research shows an underserved need for moderately priced housing in the $180,000-to-$210,000 range. So he's zeroing in on nontraditional buyers who make $67,000 or more within 10 miles of a site he intends to develop in Irvine, Calif. So far, he has identified 75,000 households that fit that category. About half of these households are headed by single women.
Over the years, Murar has conducted a number of focus groups that show what single women are looking for in a new home. Chief among their needs are security, a location convenient to work and shopping, and low-maintenance finishes and appliances.
Usually, he builds in gated communities with the amenities single women say they want most: a pool, spa and fitness facilities. At 1,200-to-1,500 square feet, the homes are smaller than a family would require, but Murar adds standard features most family-oriented houses don't have: closet organizers, laundry chutes, recycling chutes that lead directly from the kitchen to bins in the garage, and pull-out pantries that roll out from under a base cabinet and can provide extra counter space. He has even raised the dishwasher six inches so the owner doesn't have to bend down as much to empty it.
In his next project, Murar plans to address the convenience issue by creating controlled business associations with mortgage companies, movers and utilities, so that a buyer conceivably could arrange the entire move during just one visit to the sales office. "Because a single person has to arrange everything herself, we're trying to simplify the whole process," he says.
Yet not every woman is looking for a no-fuss, no-muss lifestyle. Bennett sold her previous home in a carefree yuppie enclave to buy a 30-year-old home on an acre in the suburbs.
As a single woman, she's not alone. Her neighbors include a 90-year-old widow and a single mother. "I want all the sensations of ownership, including cutting the lawn on Saturday and putting in a garden," she says. "For me, it's part of building a nest. You can't lump the desires of any one group together."