From News 14 Carolina:
The National Retail Association reports in 2003 single women bought one in five homes. That’s close to two million homes.
The share of homes bought by single women has increased about 33 percent over the past decade, making single women the fastest growing segment of the home buying population.
I would also like to see Ron make the case that prominent white supremacists both individuals in power who publicly…
You can find plenty of examples of leftists claiming that white people and “white supremacy” are the cause of problems…
> They’re starting out the same. No, they're really not! It's hard to pick just one out of the many…
You might be right! I was seeing it as a plastic disposable knife, but it could be a spoon. What…
In panel 4, I think that might be intended to be a spoon. Or maybe I just see it like…
Pingback: http://www.yoest.org
Oh, they have got homes & they have got jobs. (“careers”?) I record numbers!
What they don’t have, (and what they say they want) our husbands and children.
In record numbers!
Is hat a social problem?
Or is progress simply what happens next?
THAT’S why there are no female bloggers. We’re off buying houses, building careers and, you know, generally taking care of ourselves.
Fitz, you really are a piece of work. And actually, many of us do have children too, thanks. Husband? I can take it or leave it. Like winning the lottery, finding a husband would be a fortunate occurance, but not one I’m either going to expect or put much effort into. If it happens, it happens. In the meantime, I love my life the way it is.
I bought my home when I was 26, and received a fair share of criticism for doing so, from folks outside my family. The thought was that home-buying is something only married women have the right to indulge in; the rest of us should just make some happy landlord wealthy. Several people made commentary about the “selfishness” of single women like me who dared to buy our own homes. I thought that notion bizarre; no one claims that we are “selfish” for buying our own cars!
Really, people, get a grip. I didn’t buy my house to make some bold, feminist statement. I bought my house because I had finally saved up a down-payment, because I wanted a yard to grow a garden, cook outdoors, and relax in, because I didn’t want to share walls with any more loud obnoxious neighbors, because I wanted to be able to decorate the way I wanted, because I wanted more space, and because owning actually gives you something for your money (renting gives someone else something for your money!). None of the single men I know who bought houses had to run that verbal gauntlet, even if they weren’t engaged or even dating anyone special. Why should we have to wait until we have a husband (something that may never happen) to enjoy being a homeowner? Men receive no social criticism for being homeowners, even without a wife.
Buying real estate was the best thing I ever did for myself. Why should I wait for a husband to do it?
Besides, if I do ever get married, now I have more money to bring into the marriage because I have equity.
Pingback: Pandagon
Fitz, it seems to me that, if you plan on making some sort of crass remark about single women owning their own homes but not having what (you claim) they really want, it would behoove you to check your grammar and spelling. Not only does your short screed shine light on your ignorant bigotry, but your obvious inability to write a cogent paragraph shows how little time, effort, and thought you’ve put into forming your foolish opinions.
La Lubu, I think you make an excellent point: a single woman buying a house needs neither to be frowned upon as unseemly nor seen as making a feminist statement; both seem to me to be unnecessary extremes. Aside from you, several of my good friends (all women) have bought their own homes in the last few years (a couple of them more than once), and they did so for several reasons similar to yours. In more than once case, she was buying a home simply because it’s a sound investment: it improves one’s credit, pays a foreseeable return (almost always), and keeps the money in your pocket and not your landlord’s. So why aren’t people making waves about single women investing in Apple stock or buying T-bonds? The answer, in my opinion, is simple: because it’s a non-issue, as it should be. Just as a person’s gender is unimportant when buying or selling stock, so should it be when it comes to how they choose to invest in their home.
Oh, they have got homes & they have got jobs. (“?careers”?) I record numbers!
What they don’t have, (and what they say they want) our husbands and children.
In record numbers!
Is hat a social problem?
I’m a single woman with a career, and I’ve been a homeowner for the past 3.5 years. Some time in my early 30s I worked for a company that stressed work-life balance and I saw my co-workers (who are stil my friends) able to achieve that because our company allowed us the flexibility to work from home when necessary (it now allows telecommuting 2 days/week). This is around the time I started thinking it would be nice to have a family (husband & children). What I learned is that a lot of men in their 30s (and early 40s) are very uncomfortable with successful women and not interested in a relationship with one who has the same (or greater) earning potential as they do (the huge weight gain I had over the past year makes that situation worse).
I would love to get married and have/adopt/foster children; I can’t do the latter as a single person and am not about to just find some guy to snare into marriage because I want the husband and family. A lot of the successful single females have watched many of the women we know and work with settle instead of settling down with a compatible mate in a secure relationship. We know that marriage is a lot of work and there’s more to the right partner than just being in love. We’ve watched as many of our sisters have made mistakes in their quest for the dream and see a large proportion of them divorced and struggling or staying in unhappy relationships because they’re afraid of ending up alone like those of us who haven’t married. Yes, we’re envious of our sisters who have found the right mate and struck that balance, but we’ve also learned the lessons of those who have not and so we often will choose to be alone instead of lonely/unsatisfied within a relationship.
This being said, if anyone knows a single Jewish guy in the Philly area who is at least in his early 30s, not gay, willing to deal with some extra chub (hopefully temporary), likes animals and is looking for a woman whose only debt is her car payment, send him my way.
P.S. not to sound too picky, but the guy has to have a backbone – the last thing I want/need is someone I can boss around (I’m opinionated, but a bit of a bottom in my personal life) and I can be a major PiTA.
I have to wonder, like I said at Pandagon, if the single women they are referencing includes divorced women. Most divorced women I know took their divorce settlement and used it as a down payment on a new house. But yeah, I know a lot of never-married women who own their own homes, and from what I can tell, the supposed threat this presents to men hasn’t materialized for any of them. One guy I know married a woman who owned her own house and he was grateful that he was spared the pain of having to look for one with her.
See, I just don’t get the whole idea that because I’m female, I should put major portions of my life on hold just because I don’t have a husband. Fuck that. Any guy worth a damn as a husband doesn’t demand that a woman make less of herself, or sit around idly watching (valuable) time pass her by! I have absolutely no intention of not following my dreams just because they may alienate some possible, future, but presently nonexistant husband.
And yeah, that does alienate some of ’em. And that’s good. Because those are precisely the wrong ones to get involved with from the beginning!
Amanda, I just tried to post on Pandagon but I don’t think it took! I was married previously, but could never own a house then because he was a nonworking alcoholic after the first year of marriage. After I no longer had to support his sorry ass, I could save the necessary funds for a down-payment. I seriously wanted to be a homeowner and get off the rent treadmill, so I hit the road for overtime and was a homeowner within a year of the divorce.
Where I live, rents can be higher than a mortgage. Housing is cheap here as long as you aren’t buying into an exclusive subdivision or gated community. I know people who pay twice my mortgage for rent on a no-frills two-bedroom apartment. The number of single women here buying homes is probably higher than average because of that, even though there’s a lot of tongue-clucking about it in the (conservative) community at large.
To the extent that women wish they had husbands and don’t have them, that’s too bad, and I do believe that there are a lot of women who do wish they had husbands and can’t find the right one (and men who wish they had wives, and men who wish they had husbands, etc). Life’s tough. It’s better to have a home and no husband than no home and no husband, though. At least, I’d think so.
I’m thinking some of them are widows, too. A while back my grandmother sold her house and bought a condo, because she didn’t need the extra space and she was getting too infirm to deal with the yard. She would have done it earlier, I think, but there weren’t as many condos around when she was widowed twenty years ago. Part of it is that the market is finally providing property appropriate for single people. There are a lot more condos and townhouses than there used to be.
And a lot of it is just that women are more financially savvy and confident than they used to be.
Why can’t we have a house and no husband?
One caveat about reading too much into this. I bought my home as a single woman — the closing was one month before my wedding.
I had been saving money towards a down payment for years. My husband-to-be was still a college student. I looked into the Financial Aid formulations, and realized that I had to purchase a home in the calendar year I got married or Financial Aid would assume that all of it was available for my husband’s tuition. He’d get no Financial Aid, and I’d have no money left for buying a house.
It was just luck of the find that I discovered this house one month before the wedding, rather than sometime afterwards.
Anyway, just sharing that additional piece of data.
I am a single, female, career-minded woman. No kids, don’t want ’em. And I have no need of a husband to make all of that OK. Sure, it would be nice to meet someone compatible, but it would have to be someone really exceptional to make me give up my independence. Many of my married friends envy the blissful freedom I enjoy, but to be perfectly honest, I don’t envy any of them their wedded lives.
“Fitz said: What they don’t have, (and what they say they want) our husbands and children.”
They want OUR husbands and children! What devious witches! Thank goodness we have wardens of morality like Fitz to ensure the safety of our families by denying women the right to purchase property free of social stigma!
“Fitz said: Is hat a social problem?”
Well I do think the dissapearance of practical headgear from everyday attire has been a sad diminishing of our culture, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was a social problem.
“Fitz said: Or is progress simply what happens next?”
Is this cryptic statement some sort of zen koan? or perhaps it is a prototype for reverse zen, negative wingnut wisdom that pulls the listener away from enlightenment (I’ll call it “fitz”, in honor of its mysterious originator)
But not one word of analisis on source of income, finance particulars, or how those 28% got that house.
The point I was making: least it was to cryptic, Is that we celebrate women’s “independence”? (in this case in the form of home ownership) without looking at larger trends that effect their lives and aspirations.
I would think that a woman’s independence (sans quotation marks) is the largest trend to affect her life or her aspirations.
Do you have any “advice” for the lesbian readership, Fitz?
“Fitz said: The point I was making: least it was to cryptic…”
Huh!?
“Fitz said: …Is that we celebrate women’s “independence”? (in this case in the form of home ownership) without looking at larger trends that effect their lives and aspirations.”
So what do you suggest we do about this “problem” Fitz? What would you say to all those clearly “muddleheaded” women? Women such as those who have posted their reasons and explanations on this very thread following your hasty, knee-jerk comment?
What is your solution oh concerned one?
Capt. DMO: I made the assumption that those women would buy their house the same way I did, from their earnings.
Fitz: What larger trends are you talking about? I find that my homeowning is a great way to screen out men who have problems with independent women. Guys who are cool with independent women don’t mind dating a woman who owns her home. Guys who have an attitude about a woman who owns a home are also likely to have an attitude about other things, such as the fact that I like to read books and use my own mind.
I have to say that Fitz is on to something here. Hat is, indeed, a social problem. It’s the compulsive need to cover up & hide stuff that is the clarion call of the destruction of our civilization. Look what happened when last hats were required…. The sexual revolution! What, oh what will come of the latest trend towards hat wearing? It has me truly worried about the world that we will be leaving to our children. 2005 the peak of oil production, leading to a great increase in cost of nearly everything that makes our lifestyle possible? That’s nothing compared to what will come from wearing hats and societal acceptance of single women owning houses. You tell ’em Fitz! You great, incompetent troll you.
Perhaps it’s the *lack* of hats that concerns Fitz. Once, women were ladies and men wore hats, then JFK showed up bareheaded to his Inauguration and *pow!* the Sixties happened.
My Solution
http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,91059-13317130,00.html
See ya in England!
Zuzu,
If Fitz were worried about the lack of hats, he obviously would have written:
Is lacky hat a social problem?
So, while I can see the validity of your argument (bareheaded = barebreasted), I think that the real problem came from wearing hats. I believe, and Fitz the great communicator clearly agrees, the return of hatwearing to societal acceptance coinciding with the societal acceptance and preponderance of single female homeowners is the harbinger of our civilization’s collapse.
I have always held that Americans made the wrong choice when we decided to get rid of hats and keep pantyhose. Hats are cute, keep your head warm, protect you from the sun, and do not make you feel like an over-stuffed sausage. Say yes to hats! Say no to pantyhose!
Um, ok, homeownership. It seems to me that there’s a real difference between buying a home and owning a home. If single women are buying more homes, that’s an interesting trend. If they’re owning more homes, that might just be a result of trends in divorce and widowhood.
Hey, a Fritz? I read you’re little news article, and all I got to say is “So?”. Maybe those nice little ladies in Leeds were happy being married and breeders. Yay for them, we need good moms. I would be miserable, and I think that there are a lot of women that would be. So, yes, I do celebrate independence: the realization that happiness is not contigent on someone else, but within yourself.
>making single women the fastest growing segment of the home buying population.
And the biggest reason for soaring home prices. Between single women creating a need for that many more homes, and the working married women doubling the income of the richest families, it’s no wonder there is a housing crisis. All households should be married, single income households. It’s only fair. Two incomes is greedy, not sharing your house is greedy.
Sally, this article referenced single female home buyers, and the trend has been going on for a while….and you’re right, it is interesting. I know when I bought my house, the bank was making a serious effort to attract single female homebuyers, with great results.
I think part of the trend is due to women educating themselves about financial matters in general; after the emphasis on investing it was only natural for homebuying to increase also. For most people, it makes more financial sense to buy than to rent. Part of it is also increased education, and thus earning power. Part of it is skyrocketing rents in proportion to home prices; some of the women I know weren’t as thrilled as I was to buy their own home (they viewed it as a hassle of upkeep), but did so because it was literally cheaper than renting (especially taking into consideration tax breaks given to homeowners).
Sorry Lubbuck, but single women are emphatically not the reason for soaring home prices. We can’t compete financially with the two-income families either! And home prices aren’t soaring everywhere, just the places that are economically booming. If you live in the Rust Belt like me, there’s bargains to be had. Yuppies don’t want to live in the older neighborhoods with modest Craftsman-style homes; they want the McMansions out by the golf courses. Thank God. Their sprawl is what makes city housing affordable for the working class.
And yes, I’ve been called greedy for owning my home sans male companionship, thanks. Usually by some jobless male who was looking for a sugar mama to provide him with free housing, since his mom kicked him out.
“And the biggest reason for soaring home prices. Between single women creating a need for that many more homes, and the working married women doubling the income of the richest families, it’s no wonder there is a housing crisis. All households should be married, single income households. It’s only fair. Two incomes is greedy, not sharing your house is greedy. ”
*violin music*
Yeah, rentals are getting ridiculous. That’s why I looked into buying and I did it, at the tailend of when I could have ever afforded it.
yeah, there’s upkeep(I have a termite inspector coming out this week when the lovely little critters migrated out of my porch steps) but at least you can decide what your walls look like.
Yeah, Lubbuck, I’ll put the violin down a couple seconds and tell you, when all else fails, blame the women, who after all should be married or housebound, or I guess on the street, or at the mercy of skyrocketing rents.
You know, dude, if you lived in California, you could like go out right now and get signatures from other 1950s nostalgics out there and you might get enough for the ballot…
Look at it this way radfem—at least he can’t blame us for the rising rent! You’d think he’d be thanking us for doing our part to stem the tide of higher rent prices!
Women working is the biggest reason for soaring home prices, and for the increased gap between rich and poor. I note that you won’t share your home with a jobless male. Women generally want someone who earns at least as much as them (unless the guy is really hot), thus causing the income gap to shoot up logarhythmically. Men, back in the 50’s didn’t expect their wives to work at all, maybe a little if they were having trouble making ends meet. Someone called such women parasites, and I don’t believe it was a man. Someone called men that supported a wife (and in so doing kept down rents, home prices, gas consumption, third world exploitation, and kept up salaries here at home) – someone called these men “chauvinists” and really changed everything. Someone pretty much doubled our workforce and our consumption, making us the pigs of the world, hated by everyone that appreciates life more than relentless ugly cat fighting.
women have always worked.
First of all Lubbuck, more women worked in the 1950s than in the previous decade. And women of color, married or not, have ALWAYS worked out of the home.
Second of all, most women work the first shift in their paid job, and then pull the second shift at their unpaid job at home, which is to cook, clean, launder, nurse and look after a husband(who may or may not have replaced his mother with his wife) and children(biologically and chronologically speaking).
Some couples distribute housework evenly between them, when both work, but many still don’t.
I love it when conservatives bemoan women working outside the home but at the same time, they advocate for conditions in our society, economically speaking, that make it harder and harder for single wage households to survive, let alone provide for themselves.
Yeah, if I got married, I would like the guy to work, whether he’s “hot” or not. If he couldn’t work, and I did, then he can take care of the household and children. Some men might find that emasculating, but some find it really works for them.
*Snort*
Actually, you’d be wrong.
How many indigent women are sleeping on your couch, mister?
You know, this historical blindness comes up a lot. Can we have an women-in-the-workforce corollary to Amp’s Shorter Pro-Lifer?
“Women of color? What women of color?”
That would depend on the reason for the joblessness. Laid off due to the economy? Going back to school? Parental leave? Yes to all of those. Drug abuse? Swilling beer all day? Serious video game jones? Permanent ass-cheek indentations on the couch? HELL NO! to all those.
Yes, I work. So did my mother, so did my grandmother, and great-grandmother, and so on. Only wealthy women have had the option of not working. I come from peasant heritage, so there you go. Where I come from, everybody works; there are no trustafarians.
You really need to crack open a history book sometime; perhaps then you’d discover that inflation was not created by working women. It’s been awhile, but I used to hear catcalls that I was “stealing” a “man’s job”—that some man somewhere would be able to support his family if only I would quit my job (and be homeless, I guess). My response was “I quit a minimum wage job so I could do this; he can have that job. After all, if it was good enough for me, it can be good enough for ‘some man’ too.”
Lubbuck, I earned what I have. I’m not going to voluntarily starve for anyone other than my family, if it came to that. And I’m fed up with the shiftless-male-supporting business, too.
I bought my house as single, 36 year old male. For me it was liberating. Even though I was unsucessful finding a mate, I was sucessful at getting my financial life in order (badly needed after my 20). The housing market here is very expensive. It took me 7 years to pay off debt and save for the down-payment. Then I could only afford a fixer-upper, which takes up many of my weekends. I wouldn’t do it differently. I still love coming home to MY house.
It sucks that people would give single women a hard time about this. I felt some similar pangs myself, but no one said anything to me.
Most sucessful woman don’t give a damm how much money a guy makes. IMO, most want a male who enjoys his career and is OK with the choices he has made. In my experience it is male insecurity that is the real reason for the perception that women don’t date below thier income. Once I got over that, it never was an issue. My fiance makes about 10K more than me, though I’m more frugal so it kind of balances out. Besides, if you run into one of these woman, you can run the other way.
“Fitz said: My Solution
http://www.sky.com/skynews/article/0,,91059-13317130,00.html
See ya in England!”
So…your solution for American single female home owners, regardless of their situation or preferences, is to follow the advice of a 200 word H.I. fluff piece posted on a third rate news source which uses phrases like “top of the happiness league”? and cites a single survey conducted only in British gas stations by a corporation on behalf of their loyalty card program that apparently used smiles as a “scientific”? unit of measure.
And the advice it gives is to be British, living in Leeds, 50 years old, and married with two kids.
Seems simple and obvious enough! Thank you for your wise, mature and intellectually rigorous commentary Fitz. Good luck with your new life in England, don’t let their liberal tendencies and constant mockery of American stone-age habits get you down.
Soaring home prices are caused, I do believe, by the growing gap between the rich and poor. The rich can afford to drive up real estate prices and the poor’s wages aren’t keeping pace.
Soaring home prices are caused, I do believe, by the growing gap between the rich and poor. The rich can afford to drive up real estate prices and the poor’s wages aren’t keeping pace.
Rises in home prices are largely attributable to environmental regulations and restrictions on development. When the creation of something is limited by external factors, the price of the existing supply goes up. Housing prices are not skyrocketing in areas without such regulations.
The rich can afford to “drive up” real estate prices – if by “drive up” you mean pay what the market demands – but they have no motivation for doing so artificially. That the poor are disproportionately affected by these policies is regrettable, but the phenomenon was predictable, and predicted.
I think that Amanda, Robert, and yes, Lubbuck all have points about factors that drive up housing prices. In addition, generally everyone wants their home to be expensive. If Bob wants to move from St. Louis to Kansas City, and Mary wants to move from Kansas City to St. Louis, then Mary may want Bob’s home to be cheap and her home to be expensive, and Bob wants the opposite. The thing is, Mary votes in Kansas City elections (voting for more expensive housing) and Bob votes in St. Louis elections (voting for more expensive housing). Bob can’t vote local laws about Mary’s house’s price, or Mary Bob’s, so we end up with each community trying to jack up housing prices through various zoning ordinances and such.
Even leaving aside the incentives among politically powerful constituencies for more expensive homes, I think rising housing prices are a natural result of expansion in population and wealth, since land is fixed, but demand isn’t (environmental restriction has an impact on housing prices in the outer suburbs, of course, but even with totally unrestricted development, the amount of land in Manhattan will never increase). I don’t think there’s anything we can really do about higher housing prices, but I think implementing Georgian/Ricardian rent taxes might make the best of the situation, by providing governments with a source of revenue with little impact on incentives.
You know, I’m really tired right now, yet am unable to get to sleep. Damn you feminist homeowners, on whom the blame for this clearly lies. Also the hat. Damn that hat and all the societal problems it brought upon us.
Sorry – if need be I’ll blame this post on the lack of sleep and get to bed.
Oh, and I just caught this:
Wait, why would they want our husbands and children? But I take this first person reference to indicate that our friend Fitz has finally gone out and gay-married. Good for him. I trust the adoption went smoothely?
Hey, wait, I’m confused. The feminists want our husbands? What for? Lunch? I thought feminists hated men. There’s a memo! There’s rules. The secret feminist conspiracy doesn’t want men for anything but cat toys. What happened?!
I bought my house with my husband, but my sister recently made her first foray into home ownership in the rust belt city I grew up in. Believe me, the city is dying to attract peoople like her — people who fix up well built older homes, pay their taxes on time and don’t demand too much in the way of services.
The “housing boom” as some have indicated is really a “problem” only in select metro areas — NY, SF, DC, etc. and has only a passing relationship to environmental regulations. At least where I live, soaring home prices are partly attributable to a third factor not previously discussed, that I personally detest. There are at least three local political jurisdictions where I live that are affirmatively trying to reduce the growth of their school age population, out of one side of their mouths, and crying out of the other about how hard it is for young families to afford homes. They have adopted such things as minimum lot sizes and various other “tricks” to make housing more scarce and less friendly to families. This is not the fault of single women (or single men). It’s the fault of shortsighted municipal politicians.
I bought my house in 2001 and it’s the best thing I ever did. Absolutely no regrets at all.
I’m not an economist, but it seems the housing costs around these parts have gone up in large part because lower interest rates made buying a home, or buying a larger home, more economically feasible. More buyers mean higher demand for houses and higher prices.
And fewer buyers would lower prices. There would be fewer buyers if there wer more marriages. And if those marriages had one wage earner, there’d be less money to throw around, raising prices.
Or more houses would lower prices. If we could create an alternate dimension that was connected to major cities, there’d be an unlimited amount of space for homes close to municipal centers, hence making good homes affordable. Damn you feminists, for making us focus on equality for women instead of dimension creating technology!!!
I agree with Holly.
Part of it, is with new housing being constructed in my city which is one of the country’s fastest growing regions, is that the emphasis is on high-end housing. Meaning starting in the $500,000 range, which even though my region is in California(which has some of the most costliest housing), that would still buy you a lot of house.
The city is gungho about this housing b/c they’re trying to attract O.C. people tired of astronomical housing costs in that region, to my city. B/c even with higher-priced housing here, it’s still far below O.C.
Also, the city hates that the percentage of rentals is 44 percent, in large part b/c it’s a “college” town. But also lots of seniors on SS# and working class families rent. A lot of them lie in Redevelopment areas or CBGM areas, where there’s a requirement that a portion of the development has to be “affordable” housing, either renting or buying. It’s about 15 percent if they build that housing within the development area, or 30 percent if they build outside of it(which in prime real estate areas, they’ve been putting them outside)
We have one city council member who gives a damn about affordable housing, and three who are in hock to their keisters to real estate developers who specialize in high-end recidential.
Barbara, oh yeah, on the short-minded municipal politicians. I’ve seen all those same tricks and more…
So, if fewer buyers would lower the price of houses, then, arguably, we should limit single males from buying houses. If you aren’t part of a family, then you have NO right to drive up demand, right? That’s just selfish.
Take the logic away from the sexism, and you sound pretty goddamn silly. With the sexism, it’s even sillier.
Lubbuck, you must be a landlord. Who else would believe that a single woman is better off renting for $600 a month, instead of buying for $300 a month?
And in the meantime, all the houses that me and my single female friends bought would be sitting empty and idle, ripe for use as drug houses. Like I said, yuppies don’t want “average Joe” houses like mine. They want the cathedral ceilings, Jacuzzis, floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking the ninth hole sort of houses.
(don’t get me wrong….I’d love a Jacuzzi! It’s just going to have to wait a while!)
I hate golf, and don’t need seven bedrooms or a 4,000 sq. ft. house. And those are the only overpriced houses in my neck of the woods. Frankly, around here, if you’re complaining about the housing prices it’s because you bought more house than you need. It’s like complaining about the high cost of a Hummer payment….like shit, why didn’t you just buy a Chevy?
Why do people without kids need houses, anyways? While we’re preventing single men and women from buying, why not only allow people with children (perhaps at least 2) to buy houses? (I am not sure how this would work when you factored in things like children growing up or spouses dying, but the details can be worked out.)
Of course, this will have the effect of driving down house values and driving up rent costs, but needs must. Maybe there can just be huge dorms for people without kids.
Well, I bought one b/c I no longer wanted to be at the mercy of out of control rental increases in a city which laughs at any suggestion of rent control laws. My rent became nearly half of my income and was only going to get worse. Now, I still have to make payments and pay for upkeep, but I have four times more space to work with. It feels great.
Plus, the trend now where I used to live is to upgrade rental apartments into condos, starting at 100 grand. Well, I wouldn’t buy any place I rented, with my money.
More storage space too. No more annual broken toes from hitting storage boxes.
More important is independence. Most rentals don’t allow pets. I wanted to keep my pets. And I like changing things in my house which you can’t do while renting.
Why do people with kids get to have houses anyway? Kids screw up a lovely home. Only single people with time to decorate should get houses.
wolfangel: I bought my house five years before I had a child. Here’s why:
1. My mortgage payment was lower than my rent payment. That trend has amplified over the years. When I first moved in, my mortgage was $50 less than rent. Now, it is $250 less than rent.
2. I’m building equity. I didn’t buy my house with the idea of making money; I bought with the intention of living the rest of my life in it. However, knowing that I have a built-in investment for keeping a roof over my head helps. In a pinch, a home equity loan could help bridge a gap.
3. Hefty, hefty tax break, which is even more important for the childless.
4. I save money in other ways too. One, I have more space for a pantry and a freezer. I can save money by buying food and other dry goods in bulk now that I have a place for storage. Two, I have a yard to grow a good-sized garden in. Having a home to work in and on also helped keep me busy, instead of aimlessly going out and spending cash. I actually wanted to be home!
5. Safety. Some folks have asked me if I feel unsafe by being a homeowner without a live-in man, but it’s quite the opposite. When I lived in an apartment, I never knew my neighbors, because they moved in and out all the time. Some of them were real roughnecks. When my ex-husband broke in and tried to kill me, no one gave enough of a shit to call the police. And with twenty apartments to a building, all kinds of folks were in and out of the building; it was anything goes. Not so now. Sure, it can be a rough neighborhood, but all my neighbors know each other and we look out for one another and help each other out. With apartment living, I’d sometimes go outside and see young men sitting on my vehicle, just hanging out. No one has ever gone up in my driveway, or on my porch, to just hang out. The privacy of a household is precious. I fear break-ins a helluva lot less now that I’m a homeowner.
6. Freedom! If I feel like cranking up music late at night, I can! As long as my windows aren’t wide open, it won’t bother the neighbors. I can paint and decorate any way I please. I can have a pet. I can use my backyard for recreation. I can lift weights in the basement instead of having a health club membership (well, that was a factor before motherhood, LOL!). It’s a helluva lot easier to cook outdoors, and I don’t have to worry about the grill being stolen, since I have a garage to put it in.
7. Did I just say garage? That’s something apartment dwellers don’t have! And in the extreme climate of the midwest, with cold, heat, humidity, snow, ice, hail, etc. it helps save wear-and-tear on the vehicle. Besides the fact that it helps protect against car break-ins.
8. Besides, houses tend to be built where there are amenities like parks, libraries, restaurants, schools, etc. Apartments tend to be built where those things aren’t. Even before I had a child, I dug that I could walk to downtown restaurants, the library, and street festivals.
Bullshit on saving those simple pleasures solely for the procreative among us. Why should they deserve less?
Antigone, I agree that single males should not buy houses either. People should not be single, period. Everyone should marry.
I figured my comment about the dorms for everyone else made it clear I was being sarcastic. I guess not. Hard to tell online, sometimes.
I am single and childless (and single single, not with someone but unmarried) and planning to buy a place soon (though your reasons won’t apply to me except for the building equity one). .
Why on earth should everyone marry? And does that mean that you also endorse SSM so more people actually can marry?
wolfangel, I took your comments to be satire. Barring further expansion, I’m also taking Lubbuck’s most recent comments to be satire.
Maybe single people can own property if they just limit it to one-bedroom apartments?
Obviously then, Lubbock, you must also support bigamy, in areas of the country there’s um, a gender inbalance.
SSM would greatly alleve the crises of too many singles out there, doing God knows what to drive housing prices up…so when the constitutional amendment on marriage comes to my state, I can count on you to oppose it then, right?
(figuring that you’re one of those folks who travels around the country preaching about the importance of marriage)
LOL, you guys crack me up…Thanks for the levity.
wolfangel, I thought your comment might be satire, but I wasn’t sure. There are extreme “voluntary simplicity” folk out there that think, say, if you own more than two pairs of pants or shoes that you’re being greedy, or taking up too much of an environmental footprint. And maybe they’re right. At the same time, I don’t want to do laundry every day.
That was a common criticism I heard when I bought my house—that I didn’t “need” to because I didn’t have a child, therefore I was being “selfish”. Strangely enough, despite telling me I was “selfish”, none of the older people whose children were grown sold their house that they owned outright, for the opportunity to pay rent again. Go figure.
>Why on earth should everyone marry?
To keep housing costs down, silly. That’s what we are talking about. There shouldn’t be so many single people all earning salaries and renting or owning homes. Everyone should be in a single income marriage.
>And does that mean that you also endorse SSM so more people actually can marry?
Everyone can marry! And everyone should want to, too.
Well, of course you didn’t *need* a house. Very few people do. (Selfish is such a vast term that it’s almost meaningless, except as a term to insult others.) I certainly don’t need a house (realistically, I will probably get a condo — but not the kind in a high-rise, the kind in a converted house — I just keep saying house), and it’s probably not going to earn me that much money over the long run (no tax break, for one thing), but I *want* one, and I can afford one.
But selfish is an interesting term. You can be selfish if you do things for yourself in general, or if you do things for yourself which negatively affect other people, or do things for yourself which negatively affect other people more than not doing things would negatively affect you, etc. (There are interesting discussions about, say, selfishness and suicide, where it is “selfish” to kill yourself, but apparently selfless to want a family member to live in pain because you’d be sad.)
I don’t own many more than 2 pairs of pants, but I own a lot of shoes. You can pry them off of my cold dead feet.
Amanda, you have convinced me. People with children cannot take care of houses, so they also shouldn’t be allowed to buy houses. Houses will be very cheap, since no one’s actually allowed to live in them. Problem = solved.
Actually, to be fair, it’s people with children who can’t take care of houses. As proof, I no longer entertain at home. Neither do any of my friends. They can’t bear having anyone look at their houses in their current state.
Women are “selfish” when we think of ourselves first for five minutes of every year. Amazingly, men are not.
So…uhh…Lubbuck. Who’s going to be feeding, clothing, housing and providing medical care for all those single people who aren’t allowed to have jobs or homes? Not to mention all those single people’s children, since there’d probably be plenty of births taking place, what with all that spare time on the hands of singles, plus no birth control (no access to medical care/no money to buy BC)?
I agree; selfish is used against women for things that it’s not used against men for. A first pass at a generalisation would be that something is called selfish if either the person complaining about it disapproves of the action or if the person wanted to do it but was prevented from it for whatever reason(s).
La Luba, how did you get from “people should marry” and “single people and two-income families drive up the cost of homes and multiply the gap between rich and poor” to single people not being “allowed” to own homes?
Hell’s Bells, Lubbuck, you don’t even think people should be allowed to be single. If they aren’t allowed to be singled(without apparently being pointed out publically and ostracized into marriage, b/c how else will you sell marriage to those who don’t want any part of it?), how can they own houses?
Yes. The people who told me I was “selfish” for buying a home were not using the term in the neutral sense of “doing something for yourself”, but in the hostile sense…that I was harming others by doing something for myself. I was even told that I was harming myself, because no man would ever want me if I owned my own home. It was seen as a moral problem.
And that’s the dilemma. When a single man buys a home, it is seen as a statement of maturity, stability, integrity…..moral fiber, even. Yet I (and many of my single, female friends) heard commentary to the effect that we must be loose women, up-to-no-good, and only out for our selves. Curious that behavior regarded as positive in a man, could be regarded as negative in a woman, no?
Anyway, my interpretation (besides regarding these morons as completely bizarre), was that there’s just too many people who don’t believe women have the right to exist for ourselves. That our only function is to be workhorses or birth-horses; if we aren’t at someone else’s beck and call, we have no moral right to be. That was the real criticism behind all the blather; how dare I have a life.
How did I get there, Lubbuck? Well, simple. We’re going to keep on having jobs and buying houses as long as we can! Unless it becomes illegal, that’s what we are going to do. Even though we’re single, we still need food, air, water, clothing, housing, etc. And the only way for most of us to obtain those necessities is to work.
But why do you distort a “people should” into a “people are not allowed”? That’s not what I said at all. Of course people are allowed to be single. And people should marry. We sell them on it by ostracizing and criticizing people who choose not to marry, of course. And by romanticising marriage. Changing the culture to have more respect for marriage.
Ah, marriage. That perfect unbreakable bond that makes your life infinitely better. Just the fact of being married will improve your life. Never mind if your spouse is an abusive fuckwad, your life is still improved simply by being married to somebody. How much better would it be if we could all believe that the optimal (and most prevalent) marriage arrangement of the 40’s & 50’s is what you see on Leave it to Beaver. Then if the abusive fuckwad is the wage-earner, there is no way for the abused to leave! Brilliant. Enforced marriage and ostracising of the single, it isn’t just for cults anymore!
Can’t we go back to discussing hats and the downfall of westernciv? At least that was amusing.
Harlequin said it, dude. Redbook, before they started publishing sex tips, repeated the mantra to a good life. Marriage is the only thing in life that can make women feel happy and fulfilled.
Get with the program…
Women buy houses as a cure for that dreaded condition, penile envy….
Why ostracize and criticize single people? Single people do not harm society any more than married people.
Less, I think. Not as much glassware thrown around the room.
But single women aren’t worth anything, you know. Our value depends on the caliber of man we’re attached to, but better to be attached to ANY man than going around solo.
Point being, Lubbuck, that single women are already heavily criticized for not being married, and it’s not rushing us to the altar any quicker. It’s just getting us more pissed at the conservative busybodies who seem to want to mind everyone’s business but their own.
And come to think of it, this culture already romanticizes marriage a bit too much. There’s far too much “happily ever after” and other fictions bundled into the baggage of marriage.
Some of us have been married, and that’s why we are now happily single. Nothing will make you a bigger believer in singlehood than a lousy marriage.
I’m 20, and I have NO desire whatsoever to marry. Husband’s are liability, I don’t need. Why the hell should I get educated just to have to be subservient to the whims of my husband’s career?
I don’t want to get married. I like being single/ cohabitating. So, trying to pressure me into marriage would make me miserable.
I’ll deal with being “selfish” or have my self-intrest known. Screw everyone else, I want a job and a house.
Nah, Jake, Lubbuck is becoming increasingly amusing with each comment. The more he writes, the more I think he actually believes that crap. Kinda scary. Though not as scary, mayhaps, as society destroying hats out for the blood of our husbands and children. (wait, what was that again?)
And it seems to me that the more desperate you are to get married, the more likely your marriage is gonna be teh sux. America has something close to 300,000,000 people. We’ll do fine if not everyone starts breeding right away. And if you don’t like the housing costs, move to Berlin. I may join you. What an odd couple that will be. Though I’d have to jump out of the window within a month.
Living by myself is the best. I can do exactly as I like. If I want to watch DVD’s at 3am I can. I come and go as I please without anyone saying “where are you going?’ I can tidy up as I like and don’t have to cook.
A maybe-off-topic question: Is it really cheaper, in the long run, to buy a house than to rent an apartment? When you take into account mortgage interest, property tax, maintenance, and all the other expenses that come from owning a home, does it really make sense? (Which isn’t to deny the many psychological benefits of home-ownership; I’m just curious about the financial aspects of it.)
>jake squid sarcasm: “Just the fact of being married will improve your life.
jake, that’s a selfish view of marriage. It isn’t supposed to improve your life. Obviously, singleness improves your life. Marriage is a sacrifice.
Surely you all will concede the point, that if we aren’t pairing up into marriages, where one job and one house support two people (plus the family) then that will mean that many more houses and jobs are needed. Is that really hard to understand?
la luba>It’s just getting us more pissed at the conservative busybodies who seem to want to mind everyone’s business but their own.
But that’s what responsibility is all about. Minding your own business is just self-interest. Do you see the difference between being responsible and being selfish, or is the point lost on you?
Ahhh. My mistake. The noble sacrifice of being married improves the life of everybody in our society. Of course.
Nope. I’m not conceding the point. See, one house for 4.5 people (married couple + 2.5 kiddies uses 1/3 acre minimum. One apartment building (co-op or condo) can house hundreds of people in an acre or two. And those hundreds of people can be single or married or cohabiting, with or without kiddies. Thus, apartment buildings make many more housing units available in less space, costing less money than houses. Marriage has nothing to do with it.
Obviously, singleness improves your life. Marriage is a sacrifice.
That’s obvious? Really? I’d be interested to see any (creditable) facts that back that up.
Personally I find that marriage has improved my life as compared to singleness (well, the marriage to the non-abusive spouse – first one was definitely a sacrifice on my part – to the ex, not to my society). Marriage is a sacrifice? How so? Donating your salary to charity is a sacrifice. Risking life and limb to help or save others is a sacrifice. Announcing your relationship w/ your partner as formal and binding is not a sacrifice.
Oh, and marriages are not a single income unit. Look around you. What percentage of married folks have only one income?
“Lubbuck: Marriage is a sacrifice.”
Woah, is that the chain-rattling specter of Richard Nixon I just saw ducking behind our wedding cake?
Wow, Lubbuck seems to be simultaneously taking the moralistic conservative view of getting in everybody’s faces, and the socialist marxist view of the individual is nothing. How cool is that?
Thanks Raznor. I am indeed a moralist marxist. Or a marxist moralist. Marxism requires morality, a sense of duty to society. Capitalism requires an amoral individualistic society, and is at odds with a sense of duty to society.
Jake, marriage wan’t a sacrifice for you, since your wife works, and probably benefited you somehow. That’s probably why you got married.
Man, every thread I read like this makes marriage sound more and more like a huge drag that I don’t want to get involved in. Thanks, Lubbuck! I was thinking it might not be so bad and then I read this:
Oh, it would improve your life, amanda. Just not men’s.
Lubbuck, FYI, stay-at-home mothers across the internet are going to throttle you for making the ingorant implication that they “don’t work”. Everyone else is going to think you painfully stupid for thinking that one job is enough for most families to get by on. Some folks are lucky enough to make that kind of scratch; most aren’t. Not to mention the precarious economy making the decision for one spouse to stay home that much more difficult.
Meanwhile, one doesn’t have to be married to have a sense of duty to one’s community. I volunteer loads of time each month to various community activities, and I’m not married. In fact, when I think of the folks who take the most hands-on, time-intensive volunteer work in my community, practically all of them are single. Marriage is just as “selfish” as being single, in that it doesn’t confer any benefit or detriment to society, in and of itself.
Hestia: I guess it would depend on the price of the house vs. rent. I could imagine housing being so expensive that it wouldn’t save money, but that’s not the case for me. Factor in the hefty tax break of home ownership, plus the other savings I mentioned (being able to grow a garden, buy in bulk, fewer incidents of vandalism or break-ins that are endemic to apartment life), and I still think for most folks it makes the most sense.