Ten years ago statistics suggested an unmarried woman older than 35 had more chance of getting eaten by an octopus than she did of getting married. What a difference a decade can make. Now, not only is marriage no longer a major feminine priority – whatever one’s age – but more and more women are now buying homes on their own, making single women one of today’s fastest growing groups of homeowners.
One such woman is Jamie Pierce, purchasing manager for Jamestown Boat Yard.
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After 20 years of renting modest apartments in the North Kingstown area, most of that time as a single mother, last year Pierce proudly bought her own two-bedroom house on a shady, tree-studded lane in Saunderstown.
”I’d say it was a combination of things” that finally prompted the decision, Pierce remembered last week, a few days shy of her 40th birthday.
For one thing, she was willing to tackle the myriad responsibilities that go along with home ownership, from mortgage payments to maintenance, after years of fearing the notion because “it just seemed like a huge undertaking.”
Secondly, her long-held, generationally induced idea that home buying was something a woman did only as the female half of a married couple finally went the way of lava lamps, desert boots and other outdated concepts.
Pierce finally asked herself, as rent receipts mounted and she was getting no younger, “What am I waiting for?”
What, indeed. According to the Census Bureau, the number of women living alone has grown by a third in the past 15 years to 30 million in 1998, with close to 57 percent of single women today owning their own homes.
In 1996 and 1997, more single women bought homes than single men did, as a booming economy opened home ownership to a record number of women, who were enjoying improved salaries and a buying power that had increased by 30 percent while the buying power of men had stayed flat.
According to the National Association of Realtors, the typical first-time home buyer in 1999 earned a median income of $49,700 and purchased a starter home costing $104,000, with a down payment of $5,000 or 4.8 percent.
While 55 percent of these first time buyers were married couples, 22 percent were single women, almost twice as many as single men, at 12 percent. (Unmarried couples accounted for 9 percent of first-time buyers in 1999).
Other factors in the single women home buying boom, various sources said, include stable interest and higher divorce rates, a tendency to delay marriage, enjoy profitable careers and live a much longer life span. But it all comes down to the fact that more women today are not only choosing to live alone, but choosing to live well.
A HOUSE IN SAUNDERSTOWN became a home for single mom, Jamie Pierce.
In 1999, while married couples continued to comprise nearly two-thirds of all homebuyers, 18 percent of all of homebuyers that year were single females, compared to 13 percent in 1989, a segment NAR officials say has risen steadily throughout the decade. (The rates for single males, which represented 9 percent of homebuyers last year, have been virtually unchanged since 1989.)
And age doesn’t matter, according to the NAR, because not only are 30 percent of single women home buyers younger than 35, it’s also become much more common for women to buy houses later in life, perhaps after a divorce.
“They do not need a partner in order to buy a home, and they are successfully buying homes,” said Estelle Smith, recently installed president of the R.I. Association of Realtors, adding that “there’s a significant number of women” of all ages and incomes in the Rhode Island home market.
“They’re in the marketplace every day,” said Smith, who practices in Newport, and the only group she hasn’t seen represented in the trend is the very young, college-age female.
“I just sold a house to a single woman,” said Doris M. Charrette, owner of Marquis-Charrette Real Estate in Woonsocket. Charrette said the buyer, a long-time renter, finally decided to take the plunge after having to move from her last two apartments when her landlords decided to sell.
After a month in her new home, all she could say, Charrette said, was “I should have bought a long time ago.”
”I wish I could have done it sooner,” Pierce said, grateful that her father helped her out with the down payment, grateful she had the guts to take him up on it. “I’ve got a nice solid house and a nice yard in a decent neighborhood.”
The rising costs of renting, along with the chance to build equity, are also incentives to buy now, not later. Because of unusually high demand, rental rates in Rhode Island rose at record rates this past year, from between 10 to 25 percent, according to various real estate sources.
But for Pat Uhlman, chief financial officer for Brown & Fischer in Providence, “the number one priority” that finally propelled her to buy her own Jamestown home seven years ago wasn’t financial, it was canine.
“I wanted to have a dog,” Uhlman said, as well as a yard for him to roam in, and a place for her to garden.
Ulhman also wanted something that, while not as lovable as a pet, was just as critical to her achieving the highest quality of life.
“I wanted to be able to have control over my environment” and not be subject to the whims of a landlord, Uhlman said.
