Single women making up a bigger part of real estate market

The Boston Globe reports:

Julie Ravech's $100,000-plus salary and independent streak have taken her on solo trips to southern Africa, Spain, and Costa Rica in the past few years.

Those traits also led Ravech, 34, to buy a half-million-dollar condominium in the Back Bay in 2004, also alone.

''If I had someone to share it with, the experience would have been great, but I don't want to miss out," she said.

In the 1970s and 1980s, women streamed into the workforce. In the 1990s, they pursued equal treatment in their jobs. Today, they buy real estate.

Single and divorced women accounted for 21 percent of US house buyers last year, matching 2003's record and up from 14 percent in 1995, according to the National Association of Realtors' 2005 Profile of Home Buyers & Sellers released last month. In Massachusetts, where unusually high house prices make it difficult to afford property on one income, single women were 15 percent of 2005 buyers.


Nationally, surging participation of single women in the housing market offsets the shrinking role of married couples, who have slipped from 70 percent to 61 percent of US buyers since 1995. The proportion of single male buyers, at 9 percent, was unchanged.

With less men going to college this trend should continue.We have a feeling the bull market in dogs is here particularily in Blue city America.