Posted on 03/29/2005 11:21:03 AM PST by qam1
Fewer single women are waiting for Prince Charming to sweep them off their feet before they buy their first home.
The Wall Street Journal reports single women are buying homes in record numbers.
"It's like a dream,” said MiMi. “You are just not really there yet. It takes a few weeks to settle in, and say, ‘OK, this is my house!’”
MiMi, 29, isn't wasting anytime securing her future. She recently bought her first home.
Mimi is a part of a growing segment of single women, armed with buying power, that are unwilling to wait around for Mr. Right before investing in a house.
“If you keep waiting around and you keep renting, you're throwing away thousands of dollars each year that could be going towards equity,” MiMi continued. “So I wanted to make sure I was building something rather than throwing money into someone else's pockets."
The National Retail Association reports in 2003 single women bought one in five homes. That's close to two million homes.
The share of homes bought by single women has increased about 33 percent over the past decade, making single women the fastest growing segment of the home buying population.
"When I was a little girl we used to sing, ‘First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes whoever your friend is with a baby carriage.” I don't think kids are singing that song anymore,” said Triangle Realtor Linda Craft.
Craft says over the past ten years she's seen more and more single women wanting to buy a home. She says part of the reason is more women are thinking like business professionals nowadays.
“And the business professional says, ‘I don't want to waste money on rent, I want to own my own home. I want to start having a leveraged investment that is going to grow and protect my future,'" she explained.
Craft doesn't see the trend slowing down anytime soon. “I’ve been in business 20 years. I think 20 years from now, and I will still be in business, we will see more and more women, who are not only buying real estate, but own the majority of real estate."
Meantime, MiMi is enjoying her newfound independence, but is still open to meeting her knight in shining armor when the time is right. “Absolutely! You just have to take your time and do the responsible thing. The responsible thing is to watch out after your retirement and, like I said, investing in homes. Realty is one of the best ways to have a retirement or fixed income in the end."
Mortgage giant Fannie Mae expects single women to head 28 percent of all households by the end of the decade.
Mortgage companies never tell you about PMI, or the outrageous property taxes.
By the way, never send extra money into your mortgage company to pay down your principal. Anyone who taught you that was an idiot. Why?
$100 in 2005 is not going to be the same $100 in 2025. So you pay extra, but guess what, your principal payment never changes, so your throwing some of your money away.
After saying all that. Living in a house is better. Hands down.
A single man, thats me. Paid my home off in record time and no longer have to worry about those miserable monthly payments anymore. The value of my house has almost tripled since when I first bought it. Plus, like my first house, the ex wife couldn't make a claim to the property, and that works both ways which makes it nice and simple. Divorce sucks, and I wouldn't wish it on my worst enemy. I would only marry again if I didn't have to marry te whole family and support them like the first time, arrrggghh.
Renting is more expensive than paying a mortgage.
Using the value of a house you could afford:
multiply the value times the rate of appreciation.
Divide by twelve
That is the cost per month to rent, above and beyond that rent check.
In most areas it can be substantial amounts.
"My dream house is on 20 acres, most of which is wooded(oak trees preferably). Must have a firing range too.
And all of it outside any city limits...... "
I live in your dream home and it is great.
see in Ontario, Canada it doesn't matter if you owned the house before you got married, the matrimonial home is always split 50 - 50 unless you can prove circumstances where that would not be fair, like you were married for 48 hours like Britney Spears and I believe you cannot contract out of that either in a prenup, though I imagine in some divorce settlements it ends up not quite a 50 - 50 split for the sake of moving on.....
I always explain PMI and property taxes to customers.
However, what frustrates me is when some moron doesn't understand that their $410 escrow payment for taxes and insurance isn't MY fault (this after I told them UP FRONT that their taxes were $XXX according to the county auditor). I actually had a woman call another mortgage company because "YOUR taxes are too high" as if I passed the damn tax levy personally. I couldn't explain to this woman that the county government was the one taxing her.
Good for them!! Real estate is always a good investment!
Good for them!
I hope they are being smart and don't spend money they don't have, tho'.
same here--i mean i bought my first house at the age of 25 because i couldn't see throwing money toward rent... but i am female...
now I get it, so most of us aren't in that category, just the Beverly Hills types with the multimillion dollar houses
or New Yorkers who buy their apartments in Manhattan and like they are worried about capital gains
My cousin bought her own home when she was 29, and shortly thereafter started dating her now-husband. They sold her house (at significant profit) before the wedding and live in his since it was larger.
I don't know if it's waiting for Mr. Right as much as it's being tired of not being able to paint a rental, or trying to entertain friends in a small apartment's galley kitchen. Renting can get really old after a while.
In the current housing market in my area, most young people need two normal incomes to be able to afford a decent starter home or condo. I know we're in that position - I would love to be a homeowner now but since we're a one income family at the moment (mine) while my fiance is finishing college, we're sticking with renting an apartment for the next 8-12 months.
If I was not getting married, I would probably still try to buy a home on my own, but would be somewhat more limited in my options due to having one income.
see in the town where I live, 90,000 population, rental properties are scarce, esp decent ones, esp ones for families, no incentive here because of government interference etc, long story, so often you can buy a decent house and the mortage even with taxes and interest will be the same as or sometimes less than rent, but if you can't scrape together the downpayment, and the government even loosened up those rules lately, not sure if that was wise, as in you can now borrow your downpayment, I remember what happened in 1981 when that was going on or people had only put 5% down on their houses, when interest rates hit 21% in Canada, people just walked away from their houses, often with the furniture still in it, those were hideous times......now you have to have special mortage insurance if you have less than 25 per cent downpayment, not cheap either.....
In our area in Riverside CA it's becoming somewhat of a renters market. A $375,000 home is renting for $1500 and you can't make payments, taxes and insurance for that. Even on an interest only.
Paying extra money on your mortage, especially in the early years, can knock off years of payments. I don't know where you got your idiot information, but it's not correct. Besides, living in a paid off home is heaven. You finally have the financial freedom that makes living easy and comfortable. Taxes and insurance only cost me about $1,200.00 a year in Georgia on a 1600 sq. ft. Ranch on about an Acre lot.
Not at all. I'm saying that one should always do the math first if you require a mortgage, particularly if you are financing the vast majority of the cost. It is financially unsound often enough that it is worth crunching the numbers first, and most people underestimate the true unrecoverable costs of owning a home.
To be pedantic, there are rare cases where it is better to rent even if one can afford to pay cash for a house, but that usually involves various perversions of property tax law and similar.
A lot of landlords have little or no mortgages to cover. If the rental market is decent and the property taxes are reasonable a landlord can get an investment grade return on his real estate in the absence of a mortgage to worry about.
"And the business professional says, ‘I don't want to waste money on rent, I want to own my own home. I want to start having a leveraged investment that is going to grow and protect my future,'" she explained.
I did that. I owned a home and rental property before I married.
Sisters NEED to be smart about money and investing and making their own way in this world. Prince Charming doesn't always show up, nor should he be expected to.
Live your OWN life, be a whole, functioning, responsible, can-do woman on your own FIRST and things will fall into place for you, any way you want them to. ;)
dubya, you forgot to mention that the taxes on the excess profit (over $250,000 single/$500,000) married is taxed at the long term capital gains rate. That is 15%. Much cheaper than taxes on income for most of us.
And we can sell one house at that profit, and buy another and get the same profit again after as little as 3 years. Although anyone who is counting on getting that kind of profit in 3 years is probably delusional.
Yes, they would. They get it in tax deductions - everything they spend is deductible. And they get another tax deduction for depreciation. Those deductions can also put them in a lower tax bracket for the rest of their income.
And in many areas where the rent is so low compared to mortgage rates, the appreciation in housing values is high.
I've been a landlord for 5 years, and I have a huge profit. Even if there's a housing downturn in the next year or so, I will still have a nice profit. Better than I could have gotten in the stock market in the same time.
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