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Living the Dream? The Realities of Female Homeownership

The challenges for women homeowners may be more complex than the current narrative suggests.

The demographic patterns in female homeownership tell only one piece of the story.

The demographic patterns in female homeownership tell only one piece of the story.

Photographer: Issarawat Tattong/Moment via Getty Images

By
Robin Bartram and Japonica Brown-Saracino

There’s been a lot of celebration lately in the US media of female homeownership as a form of empowerment. In the New York Times, it was lauded as a form of “self-care.” In the Washington Post, it was described as satisfying a female “urge.”

There is good reason to recognize increases in women’s homeownership in a country that only granted women the right to solely own inherited property in the early 1900s, and that took until 1974 to prohibit banks from legally refusing women mortgages.