A staunch believer in moving on when you tire of your home or change your lifestyle, semi-retired Marsha Icko Paris is anticipating her relocation into the fifth home she’s bought during her adult years — a stable being renovated on the grounds of historic Ft. Sheridan.
Her philosophy: “Just because you buy a house doesn’t mean you have to die in that very same house.”
A 24-year-old architect and divorced single mom, Erica Flagg bought her first home, a condo, in south suburban Calumet City “because the mortgage payments are less than the rent I’d be paying.”
A 45-year-old divorced grandmother, Joyce Latham, bought her first home just south of Chicago in Merrionette Park so that she and her daughter, son-in-law and their child could live under one roof, allowing the young mom to stay at home to care for 2-year-old Shelby.
Dr. Elisa Bell, a 39-year-old psychiatrist, “saved and saved” everything she could all the way through college and medical school. She has finally put those savings into a newly built South Side condominium near 15th and State Streets. She decided to buy her first home because “I want security and I think it’s my time to enjoy.”
These women are part of a cadre of single females across the country who are buying their own residences at twice the rate of single men, according to the 2000 National Association of Realtors profile of home buyers and sellers.
In 1999 single females accounted for 18 percent of all home buyers, meaning 1.17 million single women purchased homes last year. That’s up substantially from a decade ago, when single women represented 13 percent of all home buyers, according to the NAR report.
Though married couples dominate the home sales market (66 percent), single men accounted for just 9 percent last year and unmarried couples, 6 percent.
The Realtors report says that “most single women have established a good savings plan,” and offers these figures: The median income of single female buyers in 1999 was $39,700, and they purchased a home costing a median price of $102,300 with a down payment of $12,300, or 12 percent.
“These figures show a sustained trend in the importance of home ownership to women. Industry professionals observe that single women are becoming more comfortable with investing. They see the value of homeownership as they become more familiar with finances,” the report said.
That’s certainly the case with Jessie Swain. Formerly a homeowner in Ohio, Swain, 29, recently moved to Chicago for her job in the distrubution industry.
She said she’s been “all numbers through college and in her career” and that “focusing on streamlining business expenses and increasing profits” had become part of her personal thinking as well.
When she first came to Chicago and looked at 40 different places in three days, she was still wavering about whether to rent, in order to get to know Chicago first, or to buy for investment purposes and a tax write-off.
After checking out Lake View, downtown Chicago and Lincoln Park (“imagine a 700 square foot condo for over $200,000,” she said), Baird & Warner sales associate Colette Cachey led her to the Little Italy neighborhood near Taylor and Halsted streets where she found a two-bedroom, nearly 1,100 square foot condo.
High on her priority list, she said, was finding a place “where I could get the most for my money.”
The Realtors association, home builders’ sales staffs and demographics analysts add other factors contributing to the growth of single female home buyers: women’s longer life spans, the sense of financial independence that comes with economic security, housing affordability (in some areas), a greater variety of mortgages targeted to first-time buyers and the tax benefits of owning vs. renting.
To Thomas Lys, director of the real estate management program and a professor at the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University, NAR’s report isn’t surprising because “the buying power of single women in a variety of categories has increased tremendously.”
Lys says young professionals have certainly benefited from the economic boom; women going through divorces are wiser about splitting the estate which, these days, likely includes a stock portfolio as well as a residence, and there have been strides in helping divorced mothers get alimony payments.
“Women are likely to spend some of that money on homes,” he said, adding, “no matter what (price) spectrum they’re in.”
Natalie Carpenter, managing broker of the Coldwell Banker agency on Stony Island Avenue on the Far South Side of Chicago, agrees; she says she’s worked for a long time with single mothers–more than with couples–in African-American communities.
“These young women are sensible, they get jobs, they have credit and they qualify for loans,” she said. “To me, they appear more grounded, they want a good quality of life for their children, they have a huge sense of wanting their children to have a backyard, a home.”
Though single women’s financial habits are not generally tracked, some in the banking industry offer anecdotal confirmation of the Realtor study.
John Faulhaber, vice president, division administrator for mortgage sales and servicing at Harris Bank in Chicago, said Harris neither tracks loan applications nor performance records by gender, single or not.
“But it’s obvious to us that this phenomenon has been happening, that there are more singles applying for home loans than in the past,” he said.
From the gender standpoint, he indicated that it’s practically a given: “With more women than ever working and having the income to do so, they’re just as predisposed to buy as married people are.”
The situation of Latham, a supervisor in an Evergreen Park warehouse, is typical. She never dreamed she could do anything but rent.
“I thought I’d never have enough for a down payment,” she said, thinking in terms of “around $20,000.”
With her daughter, Tiffiny,son-in-law Timothy Bowler, both 21, and their daughter living with her, “we needed more space,” she said, and started looking for something bigger–to rent. A friend of Tiffiny’s convinced Latham to call Linda Karkutt Culp, a real estate agent with Varan Realtors in Oak Forest:
“With what we needed–basement for storage, a garage, three bedrooms, a family room–so I could have my space, they could have their space, yet we could all be together, it was easier to buy than to rent.
“I didn’t know it could be that easy,” said Latham, referring to Culp’s up-front approach that led her to buy.
“She wanted to know exactly what we wanted and could pay. I told her we didn’t want to be house broke, we could fix things up ourselves. She showed us only places that were structurally sound and at a price we could afford.”
Their home in Merrionette Park “is something I never thought I could own,” she said. A different take on renting comes from 26-year-old Lisa Francis, a currency exchange manager on Chicago’s Southwest Side. Francis lived with her family in Oak Forest and started saving in earnest three years ago so that she’d never have to rent and could buy her own home when she was ready.
“No vacations, no extras,” she said, attributing an ingrained frugality to her mother, whom she calls her “role model.”
The 10-year-old single-family home in Orland Park that she bought and now lives in — “2,500 square feet, three bedrooms, two and a half baths, living room, family room, two-car garage” — spoke to her the minute she walked into “the living room with the cathedral ceiling and the mirrored dining room.”
Pamela Holt, an attorney and Rubloff broker associate who specializes in city sales, chalks up a lot of her sales to singles–both women and men–who are “not prepared to wait around until coupledom in order to buy.”
A tally of her sales this year veers sharply from the NAR’s numbers. The breakdown, roughly: couples, 37 percent; single females, 33 percent; single males, 29 percent.
Similar percentages come from Norwood Builders of Chicago, a firm that focuses on city and suburban mid-rise condos. Diane Watry, Norwood’s director of sales and marketing, said 39 percent of year-to-date sales were made to couples; 36 percent to single women; 25 percent to single men.
Perhaps even more notable, relating to single women: Of that 36 percent, 22 percent of the sales were made by women aged 30 and under; 23 percent were made to the 70 or older set.
“The young ones,” said Watry, “have decent jobs and good credit so they can make the down payment.” At the other end are widows or the divorced, often moving from apartments or single-family homes to no-maintenance condos.
Erica Flagg rented while married but after her divorce she hoped for more stability; she found a two-bed, two-bath condo in Calumet City. It was not only a good investment but its mortgage payments were less than the rent she’d be paying for a place for herself and 18-month old son, Tahj.
As with numerous women interviewed, there’s a lot of personal satisfaction and emotion involved with the choice and purchase of a home. For Flagg, an architect with a Michigan Avenue firm, the joy comes from providing a secure home for her son and “from being able to design and decorate the way I want.
“And more than that, I can say `It’s mine.'”
Another single mom, attorney Maria Greenberg, 39, bought her first home in Highland Park because she “wanted to build a new life for us and as the children and I planned the home together, it became the healing process after the divorce.”
Greenberg says buying her first home after her 11-year marriage ended “was the best decision I’ve ever made. It was like therapy.”
Greenberg and her three children, aged 7 to 13, made choices together with each one designing his or her own room, “easing the transition from our home in Highland Park to a new one in the Town of Fort Sheridan. We left everything behind, bought new furniture, regrouped, created a new life. It was costly, but a healing process.”
Ft. Sheridan proved a magnet for another single woman buyer. Marsha Icko Paris retired early as a sales rep for an international commercial film company, thinking that if she did work at anything she might try real estate. She owned a home in Edgebrook but enjoyed looking at various properties.
On one of those outings, she meandered to Highland Park, saw the Ft. Sheridan community “and lost my mind. It was serendipitous. I flipped out, the sense of history, the blending of old and new.
“Then I saw the stables,” she said, referring to the buildings that once housed the cavalry’s horses and are being transformed into luxurious residences–for people.
“I ride. It was meant to be,” she said.
Realtor Pamela Holt said Elisa Bell shifted gears emotionally during the 18 months she looked for a home.
Bell “started out thinking of what was best for her mother, so we looked at town homes, places with certain conveniences,” said Holt. “When her mother passed she looked everywhere in the city: Central Station, Harrison Lofts, Lincoln Park, traditional high-rise condos–but they didn’t have enough oomph for her.”
Bell said Holt had to practically “pull me out of a meeting and drag me down to this place that wasn’t even started and just had a model.”
Sitting in her 10th floor penthouse one recent evening, with north and west window walls offering a stunning light-studded skyline, Bell was surrounded by new furniture and unpacked boxes but her collection of dramatic photos and works by African-American artists was on the walls.
“I’ve waited for this,” she smiled.
