Buyers (of All Ages) Who Seek Houses, Not Spouses

Kristina Modares is a social media phenomenon. She goes online to inspire other young adults to get their own deeds.

She would tell you to get together with a friend or two. Then, co-buy your first home.

That’s how she began — before going on to buy several more. As a young adult, Kristina was trying to make a go of renting, while pulling in just $27K in annual income. A decade later, aged 34, Kristina is named on the deeds for multiple properties. She did it all with a little help from her friends.

Today, Kristina Heads a Real Estate Brokerage

Houses before spouses is the mantra of Kristina’s company, Open House Austin. It’s a company she started — of course! — with a friend. Together with Stephanie Douglass, she started up the firm to help people much like themselves. Most are female home seekers. Quite a few do not have life partners.

At 25, Stephanie was single and struggling on a schoolteacher’s salary. As her rental costs rose, so did her anxiety. But today, ten years later, Stephanie’s name graces 19 deeds.

As young deed holders, Stephanie and Kristina decided to become licensed brokers. These two like-minded women met their matches — each other — in 2016. Both were becoming influential in social media circles by that point. By 2019, they’d established their company, with a special focus on encouraging young women to acquire their first deeds. Today they use social media to rally young people, mostly women, to take control of their financial destinies, if they’re in the position to do it.

An element of getting ready involves building confidence. Breaking free of expectations. Traditionally, young women waited for life partners to come a courtin’ before “settling down” in a home of their own. But young people do have an array of lifestyle options today.

Sure enough, MoneyWise points to reporting from LendingTree and JW Surety Bonds, noting the rising number of deeds acquired in recent years by co-buying friends. A hefty portion of these new homeowners are young women.

Single Women Rocking the House

Women earn less pay than men do. So it might come as a surprise that single women snap up many more deeds than their male peers do. But that’s a fact, says a recent survey from LendingTree. You can own a house before you find a spouse, young deed holders seem to be telling their generation. More people are finding their life partners later, or simply choosing their own paths in the world.

Just having real estate to support them, though, is hardly the whole enchilada. Women also need to make good deals. Men tend to get more overall, both as sellers and buyers, according to research coming out of Yale.

Biases about women’s financial savvy can also seep into lending decisions and selling negotiations.

When young women co-buy, they can support each other in negotiations.

Boomers Join the Trend

The National Association of REALTORS® keeps tabs on the numbers. The group says:

• Single female deed holders almost doubled over the recent 40-year period. Today’s home buyers are 20% women. They made up just 11% in 1981.

• A fourth of first-time home buyers are female, so the trend line is clear.

If you look at all buyers, 62% are married, 20% are single women, and just 8% are solo men.

The trend is not just among the youngest buyers. Nearly one in ten boomers surveyed have gone in on their deeds with “roommates” — co-buyers who aren’t life partners. The older solo group has doubled over just the past nine years, per housing research coming out of Harvard and reported by MarketWatch.

Here’s why so many more solo people are joining forces among the 65+ set:

• Renting (in regular settings, and in retirement living) is getting too expensive.

• Buying with friends can keep costs down, and offset medical bills.

• Friendships can also be daily support systems.

Some of the boomers who buy have survived their life partners. Some have divorced. Some have long been single. They may find out that single women tend to buy later in life than single men. Today, more and more women are saying they just won’t wait any more, and are deciding to build equity as soon as they can. That way, they achieve the financial footing they’re looking for.

If they form a romantic relationship at some point, that’s fine too. They can do so from a position of greater financial strength.

Alternatives to the “Single Family Home”

Many young people say it shouldn’t take so much creativity to just get a deed. Certainly. if the homes for sale weren’t so expensive, all this “thinking outside the box” would be less necessary. About one in four co-buyers polled by JW Surety Bonds said they wouldn’t have won mortgage approvals if they went solo.

So here we are. Kristina and Stephanie think young women should feel free to consider house hacking—buying homes with extra space, or duplex-style homes, so they can rent out part of their properties.

Creative thinking can mean:

• Buying a duplex or triplex so that rental income helps pay the mortgage.

• Installing an accessory dwelling unit on a purchased property. This entails following local zoning rules and getting the permits to place a cottage in the backyard. 

Some are buying attractive places that they can even hire out to online celebrities. In all of these strategies, young buyers are pushing the boundaries of the U.S. homeownership tradition and making things work against the odds.

Important! Ask the Experts

First-time buyers making creative moves are taking compounded financial risks. Potential rewards can be appealing, and that’s why social media influencers are so compelling. But what’s offered on the internet is only a start. Deeds are legal documents, and first-time home buyers need situation-specific guidance.

Seeking advice from a licensed accountant or financial planner is the safest approach. A local lawyer will likely not charge much to look over a legal agreement that you draft with your co-buyer, spelling out who pays for what and how, what happens when one co-buyer wants to sell, what will be done if one passes away unexpectedly, and so forth.

An experienced real estate agent in your area is also an excellent source of general guidance. And your mortgage consultant can answer financial questions directly relevant to getting a loan approval.