If a woman comes to buy a home, don't immediately look for her partner: There may not be one. Women without cosigners are increasingly investing in homeownership. SmartAsset analyzed data from 400 metro areas, comparing the number of mortgages originated to women to the number originated to men. Of the 1.25 million mortgages approved, 500,000 of them were women without cosigners. Though that number is still lower than men’s 750,000, this marks an uptick in the number of women who choose to buy homes. In one year, the number of metro areas where women without cosigners bought more than men without them jumped from one city to nine. They've got the money, they've got the credit, and they're ready to own a home of their own.
About 1.25 million mortgages were approved for homebuyers without cosigners in 2018. Of those, roughly 500,000 were approved for women, and close to 750,000 were approved for men. Though nationally women’s approved mortgages made up only about two-thirds of men’s approved mortgages, women are buying more homes than men in some metro areas.
In this study, we identified some of the metro areas where women are buying the most homes relative to men. Using 2018 data from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), we compared the number of approved mortgages for women to the number of approved mortgages for men. For more information on our data sources and how we created the final ranking, check out our Data and Methodology section below.
This is SmartAsset’s third annual study of where women are buying homes. Check out last year’s version here.
Key Findings
- The number of women buying homes relative to men has increased. In last year’s study, Ithaca, New York was the only metro area where women without cosigners bought more homes than men without cosigners, by a margin of less than 1%. However, in this year’s study, women bought more homes than men in nine metro areas of the total 400. In fact, in The Villages, Florida, our top-ranking metro area in this year’s study, women bought 15% more homes than men.
- Metro areas in New Mexico and North Carolina rank high. Of our top 10 metro areas where women are buying the most homes relative to men, New Mexico and North Carolina each claim two spots: The Santa Fe, Las Cruces, Fayetteville and Burlington areas comprise four of the nine places where women were approved for more mortgages than men.
- In the Northeast, men are still buying homes at much higher rates than women. No metro area in our top 10 is located in the Northeast. In fact, according to Census Bureau divisions, of the top 25 places where women are buying homes at higher or similar rates to men, only two metro areas – Burlington-South Burlington, Vermont at No. 16 and Ithaca, New York at No. 23 – are in the Northeast.
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