Modern Day Dowry

“One half of the world cannot understand the pleasures of the other.” – Jane Austen

The March 6, 2006 issue of Time magazine provided a few homebuyer stats in Arlyn Tobias Gajilan’s article: Are You Overleveraged? Amongst these numbers is the fact that single women make up 21% of homebuyers, while 9% are single men.

A few weeks ago, USA Today had an interesting article by Noelle Knox entitled: Dream House, Sans Spouse: More Women Buy Homes. Knox cites an example, “Sarah Van Elderen, 23, who graduated last year from Grand Valley State University in Allendale, Mich., doesn't make that much money. Still, she bought her first condo in Grand Rapids, Mich., with a fixed-rate, no-down payment loan for first-time homebuyers.”

She’s proud of her first condo, even though she says, “The reaction of my 94-year-old grandma was, ‘You’re going to end up single if you buy a house yourself.’”

This isn’t just something that 94-year-old grandmothers say. I think a lot of women delay the purchase of a home for fear of getting locked into something when they hope to own a home someday with a husband or partner. I had this exact discussion with a straight single friend as a means to encourage her to buy something on her own. She is in her mid-thirties and my argument was that a man would find her independence desirable. In my opinion, I would think a guy would like a gal that had made smart financial choices prior to their hookup… the single woman’s home being the equivalent of a modern day dowry.

She said I was so wrong and that this “step” would scare men off. Gosh, who knew that straight single women still had to play such a silly game? Maybe it has nothing to do with being straight or gay. In the first three months of dating, Jeanine and I had the big “money” talk which included the question about why she was still renting. At the time, she was 33 with a good paying job at a reputable law firm and shelling out almost $2000 a month in rent. Obviously, she got the hint and within weeks she was making an offer on her first home. Perhaps, she was playing her own game… knowing that I find smart money to be sexy.

Either way, I never thought that her buying her own home would ever prevent us from buying something together. It didn’t. Actually, the opposite was true. Her first home enabled us to trade-up when it was time to take the plunge together.

Times might be changing for women as a whole. Back to the USA article, “Historically, men have always had access to the resources to provide shelter and don’t have the same imperative. Throughout our evolutionary history, access to shelter was more the province of men than women. You take the hunter and gatherer into the 21st century, and men say, ‘I don’t need to go buy shelter, because if I need it, I can get it.’ Whereas the woman is saying, ‘If I have the chance, I better get it while I can.’”

So ladies, get it while you can!