Single Buyers Becoming A More Significant Part of Home-Buying Market
March 3rd, 2010 categories: Chicago Info/News, Chicago Neighborhoods, Economic Recovery, For Buyers
First-time homebuyers have been given a lot of credit, including in this blog, for helping home sales rise in Chicago throughout much of 2009. But the Chicago Tribune, in a story on Sunday by Mary Ellen Podmolik, revealed that there’s another group of buyers that has done its share to boost the sale of local condominiums and single-family homes: single buyers, especially women.
According to the Tribune story, the number of unmarried single buyers has been on the rise since the Chicago housing market first began booming about seven years ago. Since then, there have been twice as many single female buyers as there have been single males.
The Tribune cites data from the National Association of REALTORS® that says that for the fiscal year ended in June, single buyers accounted for 38 percent of all home purchases in the Chicago area. And single women accounted for 26 percent of these sales.
In Chicago itself, not counting the suburbs, 44 percent of buyers for the 12 months ended in June were single, the REALTORS® association data said. Single females accounted for 29 percent of the condominium and single-family home sales in Chicago during the 12-month period.
That’s higher than the national average, where single women accounted for 21 percent of all home purchases. Nationally, single men accounted for just 10 percent of home sales.
These numbers don’t surprise me. After all, Chicago is a great place for singles of any gender to live. Every neighborhood in the city boasts its own character, and the trendiest, places like Lincoln Park, Wicker Park, and Lakeview are alive with high-end restaurants, independent theaters, hip shops and busy nightspots.
At the same time, housing in Chicago’s top neighborhoods is affordable today. The city’s average median sales price is down from last year, and down even more significantly from where it stood just three years ago. This means that single buyers suddenly have more sales power. Many of them can also take advantage (for the time being, at least) of the federal government’s first-time homebuyer tax credit of $8,000.
No, the fact that Chicago is attracting single buyers doesn’t surprise me at all. In fact, I’d be more surprised if the number of single buyers went down.
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