It Ain't All Big Hair and Cadillacs

The gender gap still around in buying a home

Differences show up in dramatic fashion
By Lew Sichelman
United Feature Syndicate
Published April 15, 2007

WASHINGTON -- Single men and women make up about one-third of the nation's 111 million households. Toss in unmarried moms and dads living with children younger than 18, and singles account for almost half.But when it comes to housing, about the only thing the 55 million single households have in common is that they are not married.Face it: Men and women are different. And when housing is concerned, the incongruities rise to the same level as how the two genders use TV remote controls, ask for directions, judge distances and hunt or gather.For example, they operate differently in the buying process.

Guess which sex wants to make a decision as quickly as possible and which one wants to take more time?According to a small survey taken early this year by Countrywide Home Loans, men run while women saunter. In fact, nearly half the women polled said they did not take enough time when they bought their current residence while almost a quarter of the men surveyed said the process took way too long.Countrywide's findings are based on a telephone poll of just 219 owners, so they are not statistically significant.

But plenty of other evidence shows how differently the genders approach housing and homeownership. And none of it surprises Wanda McPhaden, a partner in BCA Real Estate Investments, a female-centric company in New York City.BCA, which stands for believe, create and achieve, was created to show women how they, too, can create wealth by investing in real estate."Women usually don't think about the benefits of homeownership until they are older," says McPhaden, a 20-year real estate veteran whose new company is working with a female builder in Westport, Conn., and is backed by several women investors. "Men get it because they are taught very early on.

Women aren't."Perhaps that's why male buyers tend to be younger than their female counterparts. The median age of single men who purchased houses between 2000 and midyear 2003 was 37, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. In the same period, the median age of single female buyers was 42.An even deeper look at the numbers shows that men account for the largest share of single buyers younger than 25, while women make up the largest share of single purchasers in the 45-to-64 age group and the older-than-65 set."My theory is that women don't think they can be homeowners until they are older," says McPhaden, who is also starting a small investors club for women with less than $50,000 to put into real estate.A lot of that has to do with money, she believes.

Of course, there are no mortgage products aimed specifically at one sex or the other. Men and women are supposed to be treated equally when it comes to financing. But the investment adviser maintains that men instinctively know how and where to find financing while women have to be taught.Here's another big difference between the sexes: In the same 3 1/2-year period, the census found that 53 percent of the male buyers had never been married versus 35 percent of the female buyers.

Indeed, the largest group of single female buyers, 49 percent, were divorced or separated versus 41 percent of the men. The rest were widowed.Everyone knows by now that women are paid less than men, though they are sometimes doing the very same work as the guy in the next cubicle. But Harvard University's Joint Center for Housing Studies put an exclamation point on that fact in last year's report that found more than an $11,000 disparity on the median incomes of male and female home buyers -- $48,000 for the men, $36,800 for the women.Looking at income a little differently, the Joint Center found that 62 percent of the women purchasers earned less than 80 percent of the median for their areas compared to 49 percent of the men. On the other side of the spectrum, 28 percent of the males earned more than 120 percent of the median versus 17 percent of the women.

Despite it all, single female buyers outnumber the males. Always have, says the National Association of Realtors. But in 2006, NAR's annual survey of buyers and sellers found the gap has widened to its greatest spread ever -- 22 percent of all buyers were single and female, and just 9 percent were unmarried males.According to another piece of research, this one by the Brookings Institution, a Washington think tank, the suburbs now contain the largest portion of non-family households, which includes singles, roommates and elderly people living alone. And just like married folk, singles buy mostly single-family houses.In fact, according to Rachel Drew's analysis of unmarried female home buyers for Harvard's Joint Center, single women bought 3.1 million houses between 2000 and midyear 2003 and men purchased 2.7 million.

That single-family houses are more popular than condominiums among unmarried people runs contrary to popular perception. But singles also bought a lot of condos. Women purchased 554,000 condos in the 3 1/2-year study period, and men purchased almost 380,000.McPhaden, who has taught real estate at Norwalk (Conn.) Community College for 14 years and is active where she lives in Ridgefield in an organization aimed at improving the lives of young inner-city women, understands this phenomenon, too.Men often don't want the aggravation of taking care of a large house or apartment, she says. "They look at their pads as places to entertain women."Women, on the other hand, tend to see their houses as homes, as places to live."They may never get married, but they want a home to live in because they are much more social," McPhaden maintains.

The NAR's annual survey of buyers and sellers confirms what McPhaden senses. While half the unmarried buyers told researchers they bought a house because of the desire to own the roof over their heads, women placed more importance on living near family and friends. Men, on the other hand, placed more weight on living close to work or school.And finally, there's this other difference between the sexes. Women, according to NAR's research, are more likely to compromise on the size and cost of the houses they buy to obtain "other characteristics" that are more important to them.

----------You may write to Lew Sichelman c/o Chicago Tribune, Real Estate, 435 N. Michigan Ave., 4th floor, Chicago IL 60611. Or e-mail him at realestate@tribune.com. Sorry, he cannot make personal replies. Answers will be supplied only through the newspaper. E-mail this story
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