Single women are buying more real estate than single men.
Per Wall Street Journal’s MarketWatch,
Unmarried women accounted for 21% of home purchases in 2009, while unwed males were 10% of the buyers, according to a National Association of Realtors report in November. It’s a dramatic shift from 1981, the first year the numbers were tracked, when single women and men each accounted for 10% of home sales.
The article goes on to explain that this hasn’t quite sunk in with some industry professionals, who are having to learn to be “gender-friendly.” A case study is Sara Barger, a 26-year-old freelance video producer who “pursues buying homes as a way to safeguard her net worth.”
Earning roughly $90,000 a year, the American University graduate bought her third Washington property in three years in January when she closed on a four-bedroom $350,000 foreclosed townhouse in Columbia Heights. Barger rents out three of the bedrooms as well as her two condominiums to supplement her income and subsidize her monthly $5,866 mortgage, condo and tax expenses. After her rental income, she ends up owing about $625 a month, including utilities.
Could that be you?
