It was a hard no when Nicki Mayo’s mother tried to sell her the Baltimore home she grew up in. At age 32, she saw the challenges of living in a neighborhood wrought by theft.
Mayo considered renting it, but she realized managing tenants would be a full-time job. And then there were those pesky, fluctuating interest rates. Instead, Mayo, a journalist, waited more than a decade after that to purchase her first home in Bowie, Maryland. But it wasn’t by choice.
“Journalists, we move all over,” she said. “That hurts our chances of building anything a lender would want. My entire career has been moving around to various places and having the rug pulled under me every two years.”
Mayo added that she was also holding out on another option that she was told by many would be a fail-safe: a husband to sweep her off of her feet.
“That Christian husband never showed up,” said Mayo, 45. “‘You’ve got to wait for him to save you. ‘He who finds a good wife finds a good thing’ — this is what I was taught. I am here to be under the umbrella of some mythical husband, and together we will buy the house.”
According to findings from a recent report published by the National Association of Real Estate Brokers (NAREB) — “The W.I.R.E Whitepaper Report 2023: The Landscape for Black Women Investing in Real Estate” — single Black women between 35 to 44 are, in fact, watching and waiting to buy a home, with an estimated average age of 45 years old. This leaves Black women with a 30-year house note until they are 65 to 75 years old.
NAREB’s report posited that single Black women are lagging behind when it comes to home buying for a myriad of reasons, including credit challenges, fright of being home-poor and simply put, playing the waiting game.
“We pulled the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data to see when women–especially women of color – are applying for loans,” said report co-author and Texas Southern University associate professor Dr. Sheri Smith. “We also looked at the challenges and there’s no one magic reason the bulk of Black women applying for loans is age 45.”
Financial Challenges, Prioritizing Others Before Homeownership Opportunities
African American women often wear many hats at once — from career person, to mother, to caregiver, and more.
Smith said some single Black women felt more comfortable diving into homeownership after sending their children to college. In other situations, data collected showed single Black women were held back from applying for home loans because of high debt and/or bad credit — but there’s a catch.
“Oftentimes, it’s not their debt … they extend themselves for the people they care about and love, but when they go for a house, the numbers don’t look right,” said Smith, referring to co-signing a cell phone plan or car loan for a family member which impacts one’s debt-to-income ratio. “We’re finding some of this is on the banks and some is on African American women who need to watch their credit. Then, there’s school loans. A lot try to wait until their school loan is paid off, but if you’ve been paying on it, it goes in your favor because it shows you know how to manage debt.”
Financial roadblocks also slowed down Mayo’s process.
”On top of that,” Mayo said, “I was broke, so I wasn’t buying anyone’s house.”
Making Yourself Attractive to a Lender Versus a Suitor
Now that Mayo is a two-year homeowner having purchased at age 43, she said she’s never leaving her home unless she gets married or her future family outgrows her home. She’s also thankful she was able to position herself to have a stable income to make her more attractive to a lender.
“I believe in love and I believe in what God has in store for me,” said Mayo, who is also a professor at George Washington University. “I’m also watching a lot of people go through divorces. My 20s and 30s [was a time of] me waiting for the husband to show up. I was supposed to ‘prepare myself’ as a woman of God. I was told to go and be educated, and go and do your career because that fantastical God-given man will show up and we will get a house together. That’s what slowed stuff up.”
While cultural norms seem to play a role in delaying home buying for Black women, former DMV renter and Howard University graduate Maya Gilliam isn’t part of NAREB’s 45 and over statistic. She first purchased a home in North Carolina with her sister when she was 22, soon after graduating from college. In her late 20s, she purchased two buildings for her then-growing spa business, and later sold them and used the capital to start Ma’ati Spa Ghana, a thriving overseas business, and purchase two homes in Ghana.
“It’s a huge mistake to wait on marriage for any goal, not just buying a home,” said the mother and divorcee, who is now debt-free at 40. “I think that’s detrimental, especially for Black women in America. The ratio of women to men at Howard when I was there was 13 to 1. If you want to wait for a husband, you may be one of the 12 that never buys anything. Half the people you’re waiting for don’t have the ability to buy a home, co-sign, put their name on the mortgage because they’re not gonna have the financial strength to do that. Buying a house is something everyone should start young with. If you have a sibling, do that.”
Cher Castillo, associate broker at the D.C.-based firm Corcoran McEnearney, said about 85% of her clientele are professional Black and Brown single women between the ages of 27 and 35.
“They don’t have that wait mentality,” said Castillo. “Instead, it’s ‘I’m gonna buy it now even if it may not be my dream home, get that equity, use it as an investment, leverage the equity and use it to purchase my next property. They will ask me for my opinion on whether I think it’s a good idea to purchase a loan without being married or purchasing with a partner. My response is always, ‘yes.’”
“I bought my house at 22 and I was single,” she continued. “It was the best decision I ever made. At 25, I sold it, made a $250,000 profit and that was the nest egg to not only purchase another property, start a business and invest in myself and other investments at an early age. If you do get married, you have an additional asset you can use and manage as part of your generational wealth.”
Never Fear — Help is Here
While the success stories sound exciting, it takes time to understand the intricacies of home buying including interest, managing one’s debt-to-income ratio, down payment assistance programs and managing home insurance and repairs.
NAREB’s report recommends starting partnerships with colleges, trade schools and sororities to host financial literacy classes. Further, the organization suggests leading post-homeownership counseling programs for seniors to help preserve homeownership and pass down property for the next generation.
Bobbie Wasserman, based in Santa Monica, California, created Single Lady Estates to help women deal with what she refers to as the four pillars of problems women are challenged with when it comes to homeownership. Through workshops, blogs and a podcast, she navigates the details of homeownership in a safe space for single women.
“They don’t feel financially savvy enough, in general they make lower wages than men, they lack confidence and they lack a supportive community,” said Wasserman, who offers virtual workshops on confidence in buying a first home, reselling and purchasing a home, and financial literacy. “Washington, D.C.’s Black Homeownership Strike Force, where the mayor wants to help 20,000 people buy homes by 2030, was not pulled out of the air. 2030 will be the SHE economy. Women who are getting educated, are getting jobs after they graduate and their sole purpose is to buy a home so they don’t pay rent. Gone are the days of the 1950s.”
“Baby Boomers are dying off, leaving inheritances to all of their children,” Wasserman continued. “A century ago, it would have only gone to the sons. Women are coming into these buckets of money — not only inheritance, but a lot of women are going through ‘the great divorce.’ [Women in their] 50s — they bought homes with their husbands, and after getting a divorce they have money. Some are career women coming into pensions and they’ve saved. So you’ve got these two areas of lower age and higher age of women and all of that is set to peak in 2030.”