While the media might lead you to believe that single ladies spend their time knitting scarves for their imaginary children, we’re actually much too busy snatching (GET IT) up a huge slice of the American Dream to waste our time with all that*. According to the National Association of Realtors, since the mid-1990s, single women have purchased homes at nearly twice the rate of single men — and last year, we made up 18 percent of the household composition in the association’s Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers. BAM.
Despite all this, it’s still not as easy for a woman to get into a home as it is for a couple — or a man. Consider the gender wage gap:
Because the average salary for a woman still lags behind men’s (the American Association of University Women says women earn 82 cents for every dollar a man makes one year after graduation) and lenders favor two-income households over single earners, Lautz says women are “making the most sacrifices to get into a home, but they’re still placing a high value on owning a home of their own.”
That said, sisters are still making it happen. Maybe that’s because, on average, women have better credit habits than men — according to Experian, men have a 7 percent higher incidence of late mortgage payments and 4.3 percent more debt than women — and credit goes a long way toward securing home loans.
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