Single Women Leading in Home Ownership - Expert Edition Episode 57
In today's episode, I want to share something really cool about owning homes. Did you know that in most places in the United States, women who are not married own more houses than men who are not married? That's right! Even though women usually earn less money than men, they are ahead when it comes to having their own house. We're going to talk about why this might be happening and share some interesting facts about it. I'll also tell you about my own journey of buying houses. I bought my first house when I was just 21 years old, and now, I've bought a total of eight houses all by myself! It's been an adventure with ups and downs, but I learned a lot.
Mentioned article: Single Women Own More Homes Than Single Men | LendingTree
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TRANSCRIPT:
[00:00:00] Happy Tuesday, you guys filming some UGC content with Naima for GoHenry. So, I look a little put together today. If you guys want to hop over on YouTube and see what I'm looking like, I actually look like something. Anyway, I wanted to talk about homeownership and LendingTree put out this interesting article in January this year called the Homeownership gender gap,Single women own more homes than single men.
Women typically lag behind men in pay. According to the U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, women's median weekly earnings are only 83 percent of men. Yes, still today, there is still a gender pay gap. Yes. Surprise, surprise. While research generally indicates women are less well off financially than men, one key area in which women are likely to fare better than men is home ownership.
So a lending tree analysis of the latest U. S. Census [00:01:00] Bureau data finds that single women who live by themselves are more likely than single men who live by themselves to own a home in 47 of the 50 states.
Some of their key findings were that across the u. s. Single women own 2. 71 million more homes than men. The home ownership gender gap has increased slightly since 2001 Delaware with the highest share of homes You Owned by single women has the largest home ownership gap.
I don't know anybody that lives in delaware after delaware louisiana And mississippi have the highest single women home ownership rates The home ownership rates are highest among single men in new mexico north dakota and alaska I understand alaska those other places. Not sure alaska North Dakota and South Dakota are the only states where single [00:02:00] men own a higher share of homes than single women.
So the top 10 states with the largest share of single women homeowners are Delaware, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Florida, New Mexico, South Carolina, West Virginia, Maryland and Illinois. The States with the largest single men home ownerships are New Mexico, North Dakota, Alaska, South Dakota, Wyoming, West Virginia, Montana, Michigan, Iowa, and Ohio.
And then the States with the widest gaps are Delaware, Maryland, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Louisiana, North Carolina, Florida, Alabama, New York. And Virginia now, I think is interesting and we actually talked about it on my live YouTube show called that's what she said.
And we talked about this and then there is some guy on Tik [00:03:00] TOK that took a clip from that video and said that it was no shade, but he was saying that he thinks that the majority of the reason why Single women own more homes than men is that they got them in divorce. And I thought that was a very interesting statistic because typically in divorces, like a man doesn't just give up the home.
And most states, the assets need to be divided. It's a very contentious process. And usually the woman just doesn't get the home, even if they do have kids together. So I'm wondering where that came from. And then I want to share. Like my home buying journey, and I'm going to count through it through this podcast.
But I have owned most of my houses and all of them as a single woman, I bought them by myself, even if I was with a partner. And so I think it's interesting and I find that just through my experience, subjectively speaking I have owned [00:04:00] more homes than most men that I know have dated or socialized with.
And I owned a home earlier than most men. And like I said, I bought them all when I was single. So I thought it was hella interesting about the fact that men jumped to the fact that single women get these houses from divorces and typically when they're classifying single women in these stories, just to put this out there in these articles like that.
It's usually going to be single, like non married, like this is not a divorce woman. So wonder where that kind of sentiment comes from. But my home ownership journey started when I was in graduate school. I bought my first house in 2004. It was a condo in Inglewood. I was 21 years old. And by the time I was 25 years old, I owned five houses total. And the way that that happened was I've always done hair like my whole [00:05:00] life. Since I was five, I was raised by a single dad. He didn't know how to do hair. So I had to learn how to do hair early, was doing hair all through high school, how I bought my first car. And in college, I worked at a hair shop.
The hair shop that I worked at the next door to it, the owners of it had a real estate business. So I was always surrounded by real estate. So they helped me get my first condo. And then after that, I bought a duplex and then my good friend, Patrice Washington, she was Patrice Cunningham at that time.
The money maven you might know her we went to school together, but she had a real estate company When I was in graduate school and I through them I bought a single family house in the atlanta, georgia area and then I bought To like townhouses in North Carolina. So that put my total up to five houses.
By the time I was 25 when I bought those houses, the [00:06:00] housing market did a crazy thing. My mortgages was upside down, tenants weren't paying me. And so it caused me to have two foreclosures and two short sales, but I still held on to my first primary residence which Englewood condo that I bought and I kept that one all the way until right before my oldest daughter's first birthday.
So all the way until 2015, I said, I bought that one in 2004. So over 11 years. And then after I had all of those housing things on my credit, it took me a long time to buy a house. So I had five houses by the time I was 25. And then when I was pregnant with my oldest daughter, Naima, my credit was good again, I had bounced back.
And then I bought my first house in the city that I live in now. So that brought my house up to six houses. Lived there for three years. Went through my marriage and divorce there, sold that house [00:07:00] rented for a little while. And then with my new partner, we decided to move to Reno. So we bought what's called a duet.
They're only one shared wall. So that brought my housing total up to seven houses that I owned. And I, even though we were partnered, we weren't married. So I bought that house. In mine under my name. So as a single woman, I bought that house. That was seven houses. I bought and then we sold that one moved back to the bay And then this is the last house that I bought so I am up to being a homeowner of 8 houses as a single woman also bought this house as a single woman, even though I still with my partner at that time.
That time it was strategic because the plan was for me to buy this 1 and then he would buy the next 1. And so that we can. Both benefit from first time home buyers, but anyway, that didn't work out. But I think it's very interesting. I think this article is very interesting. I will put the link to the article in the show notes for [00:08:00] you to check it out.
I want to hear what your opinion is. Why do you think single women, even though we have a drastically lower pay overall, there's still a gender pay gap. We are far exceeding men in. Drop it in the comments. Let me know. I think it's very interesting, but yes, I thought this was a great time for you to hear about all the times I have brought a home as a single person and to give you some perspective on where I was at during that time.
Looking forward to hear what you think about this article and what you think about my home ownership journey. See you guys on Thursday.
Hey there I’m Naseema
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