Single People Are on the Hunt for Homes, Too

By Dennis P. Carmody, Asbury Park Press, N.J.

Mar. 9–For Melissa Kiss, it’s a simple matter of math.

“I’m paying $1,310 a month for rent,” said the 28-year-old school teacher who is single and lives with her mother above the pet store that her mother co-owns in Brick. “I’m looking at that number and thinking, ‘That’s a mortgage payment.’”

Like millions before her, Kiss has realized there’s not much financial point to throwing her money away on rent each month, when instead she could be paying off a mortgage and building up equity in a home of her own. So the elementary school teacher is now looking for a house to buy in the Brick area.

She is not alone. According to the National Association of Realtors’ annual survey of buyers and sellers, 21 percent of home buyers last year were single women. By way of comparison, single men make up 9 percent of the market.

Buying a home is still something done mostly by married couples — they make up 61 percent of home buyers, according to the survey.

But the findings on single people represent a real difference in the way men and women live. In 1981, the first year the survey was conducted, the number of single women and single men home buyers was virtually the same — 11 percent for women, 10 percent for men, said Walt Moloney, spokesman for the association.

“Nowadays, women are not waiting to start their lives,” said Stacey Rose, a licensed clinical social worker who offers counseling services at the Rose Relationship Learning Center in Ocean Township.

Women are focused more on building their professional careers, and so they’re naturally drawn to the financially wise decision of owning a home rather than renting, she said.

“They don’t need a man to buy a house,” Rose said. “They’ll pick up a relationship along the way.”

One factor at work may simply be the traditional difference seen between men and women and their approach to commitments and risk.

“Women are more apt to want permanency and men are less apt to want to settle,” she said.

The survey doesn’t ask single men and women why they are buying homes, Moloney of the Realtors association said.

“It may be as simple as guys don’t get serious about real estate until they meet the right woman,” he said. “It seems like women have a better sense of the value of real estate.”

Sometimes that can be seen even with married couples, said Mark Kotzas, owner and broker of Crossroads Realty, Dover Township. “Women are the decision makers,” he said. “They worry about school districts, neighborhoods, etc. Husbands worry about the mortgage mainly.”

In years past, when the numbers were closer to equal, that comparatively lower percentage of single female buyers may have simply represented an untapped demand for housing from single women, who 25 years ago still had a harder time getting credit and often had a greater income disparity with men than they do today, Moloney said.

Men and women may simply grow up with different attitudes toward building a home, said Fred Kelly, dean of the School of Business at Monmouth University in West Long Branch.

“The male concept of setting up a household is not something that’s bred into them or genetically part of their nature,” he said. “Women prefer the safety and security that a house provides.”

Sometimes simple practicality might explain the disparity.

“A portion of that 21 percent (of women home buyers) would be single parents, and moms tend to raise the kids more than dads,” said Don Moliver, director of the Real Estate Institute at Monmouth University.

That thought was echoed by Darleen Palmizio, a licensed clinical social worker at Associated Counseling Services in Manasquan. Single mothers often wind up with primary custody of the children, while divorced fathers in contrast, often rent an apartment just big enough to host the children during their days of custody, she said.

Additionally, it may be difficult for single fathers to afford a home of their own, she said. “Child support eats up a lot of your pay,” she said.

Kiss, a teacher at Bay Head Elementary School, wants a three-bedroom house, so she and her mother, Dawn, will have rooms for themselves and for the reiki business they are starting, a kind of stress-reduction therapy. But given her $220,000 maximum price range, she’s finding the same frustrating search that many first-time home buyers are facing, no matter what their marital status.

“I’m seeing a lot of things that are overpriced for what they’re offering,” she said.

http://www.app.com

If you are looking for homes for sale in Spring Lake NJ, Newark NJ, Marlboro NJ or any other area in New Jersey ERA Othello Realty are the real estate agents that you are looking for. Whether you are looking to buy or sell your New Jersey real estate they can help you. Search through thousands of houses for sale in New Jersey.