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Default Single women head for homes

Single women head for homes
More economic clout helps make female buyers a growing force in
housing market.
By Jim Wasserman - Bee Staff Writer

Published 12:00 am PST Sunday, February 18, 2007
Story appeared in BUSINESS section, Page D2

Kim Braziel bought her first town house three years ago when she was
26 and a single, working woman in Los Angeles. She recalls the move
when she was just four years out of college as a stand for financial
independence.

"I just didn't want to pay anyone else's mortgage," Braziel says. "I
wanted to invest in my own future."

Last month, arriving in Sacramento for a new job, she bought her
second house -- a town house in Natomas.

Home builders and real estate agents are starting to pay more
attention to people like Braziel. At 29, she represents a significant
-- and growing -- segment of the nation's home-buying market: single
women.

While married couples are still 60 percent of homebuyers, their market
share has dwindled from 70 percent 12 years ago. Meanwhile, statistics
from the National Association of Realtors show unmarried women like
Braziel, a consultant for employment services giant Manpower Inc.,
accounted for 22 percent of sales last year, up from 14 percent in
1995.

Single men, on the other hand, accounted for just 9 percent of home
sales in 2006 -- unchanged from the mid-'90s, the Realtors association
says.

Experts say the trend is ripe with opportunities for condominium
builders and sales agents who specialize in the smaller, low-
maintenance houses that agents say single women prefer. Builders
already target women when decorating many model homes, emphasizing the
lighter colors they believe women favor and showcasing upgrades in
rooms such as the kitchen. Real estate agents say that they emphasize
a neighborhood's safety and the security of attached garages when
talking with single women interested in buying a home.

But the recognition of the role single women play in the housing
market also has its negative side. At least one consumer group
contends single women often are charged higher mortgage interest rates
than men.

Analysts say this home-buying phenomenon is rooted in societal
changes, including the fact that women are waiting longer to get
married. Married women who get divorced also are less likely to
remarry -- and remarry less quickly than men, according to a 2006
study by Rutgers University's National Marriage Project. Another
factor is the economic gains college-educated working women have
achieved.

"They are a solid majority of the college students in America today,
and for several years now they've been taking home a solid majority of
the bachelor's and master's degrees earned in this country," says
demographics expert Peter Francese. "They have substantial money-
making capabilities and will do so far into the future."

New Hampshire-based Francese says women are 58 percent of U.S. college
students and slightly more than half of managerial and professional
workers.

"It should be no mystery at all that the first time in history that
women have sufficient economic power on their own to buy homes that
they go out and buy them," he says.

A Harvard University study last summer found that unmarried women are
buying about 1 million houses yearly, and between 2002 and 2003 they
spent $550 billion on residential real estate.

The study, from the university's Joint Center for Housing Studies,
said single women prefer homes in the city to the suburbs and tend to
shy away from new construction. Most buy smaller homes or less-
expensive condominiums that give them a stronger sense of safety while
requiring less maintenance.

But they don't shy away from repairs, the report says, a fact not lost
on hardware giants such as Lowe's Home Improvement. The company says
its stores and the tools it buys from suppliers are designed to appeal
to them. Stores are brighter, tools are lighter and more ergonomically
built, says Lowe's spokeswoman Karen Cobb.

None of this surprises Francese.

"One does not need a Ph.D. in demography to know that women are far
more interested in a home, in a nest, than men are," he says.

Most unmarried men just want a place to live and often live with
friends until marriage, he says, while women see homeownership as both
desirable and a ticket to financial security.

That places them squarely in the sights of mortgage companies, the
Consumer Federation of America said in a study released in December.
The federation said women are 32 percent more likely to be charged
more for loans and refinancings even though women and men generally
have similar credit profiles.

The study, based on 2005 federal data on mortgages from around the
country, reasoned that many women may have less confidence in their
knowledge of financial products, which puts them at a disadvantage in
negotiating with lenders. But the California Mortgage Bankers
Association disagrees.

"The industry supports fair, non-discriminatory lending, and any
suggestion otherwise is unfounded," says CMBA spokesman Dustin Hobbs.

Nationally, women outnumber men by 5.8 million, according to the U.S.
Census Bureau. Locally, there are 41,000 more women than men in El
Dorado, Placer, Sacramento, Sutter, Yolo and Yuba counties, the bureau
says.

Divorce and separations, too, are factors driving more women to
purchase residences on their own. Nationally, between 40 percent and
50 percent of marriages end in divorce or separation, according to the
2006 Rutgers University report on marriage.

The bottom line for home builders and real estate agents: It pays to
pay attention to the trend.

Henry Ung, a real estate agent in Elk Grove, says nearly 25 percent of
his clients are women looking for houses after divorce. Ung calls them
"a very cautious group of buyers" who often have a household income of
about $50,000 and want a two-bedroom home.

Home builder Regis Homes of Sacramento says its models are decorated
to appeal to single women.

"The single female house has more bright colors, lighter cabinets and
lighter color on the wall," says associate marketing director Trisha
Thomas. "It's a more feminine feeling."

KB Home doesn't design models specifically for single women, but it
builds condominiums with them in mind, says Barry Grant, Sacramento-
based president of the builder's North Bay territory.

"Many of our women tend to look for the higher-end kitchen options,
nice flooring, hardwood flooring and upgraded cabinetry," he says.

For many unmarried women the goal is also simple companionship, says
Sacramento real estate agent Barbara Frago. Frago works the older
spectrum of the market from personal experience, having bought her own
condominium in the city's Campus Commons neighborhood after her
husband died.

She says there is time for the first condo, then the single-family
home with a yard and "then there comes a time when you don't need all
that."

Campus Commons, she says, has "a lot of single ladies. "A lot are
single through aging and being widows, as I am." Frago says. "A lot
scale down from the family home. They see they can be in an area
they're used to and feel safe, and have other women around that they
can join."

http://www.sacbee.com/103/story/124852.html

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