When Buying a Home
Cramps Your Courtship

Liz Myers, a 30-year-old account rep at a Los Angeles health-care public-relations firm, has a second date with a man who has relationship potential. She's been out with at least six men since a breakup last year, and she likes this gentleman, a bicoastal fashion designer in his 30s. But she has a secret that has scared a few dates away: Ms. Myers just bought her own home.

"I've been burned by my past experiences," Ms. Myers says. She's withholding her homeownership status -- like her M.B.A. degree -- until things get "serious," she says.

Single-women homebuyers represented about 18% of all U.S. homebuyers in the first half of 2004, according to the National Association of Realtors (NAR). Slightly more than one-fourth of them are 25- to 34-year-olds -- the biggest subgroup of single women buyers. While women's rush into the housing market has been great for their financial security, many women, like Ms. Myers, are saying it's putting a damper on their love life.

Wendy Tilton, a real-estate consultant in Princeton, N.J., and an adjunct assistant professor at New York University's Real Estate Institute, says many single women in their late 20s to 30s have internalized a mixed message about home buying. They value their financial independence but don't want to intimidate the male-as-traditional-breadwinner. A boyfriend's negative reaction to their purchase confuses or irks them. They feel that they "don't want to upset the man," she says. "He's got to be the lead one in the relationship."

Viviana Zelizer, a Princeton University sociology professor who has studied money's effect on relationships, says in an e-mail interview that men may balk at the redistribution of power in a relationship -- real or implied -- that comes from a woman owning property. In the initial stages of a relationship, many men support the idea of women holding economic power, but as women accumulate financial independence beyond a certain point, they begin to show resistance, Ms. Zelizer says.

In Ms. Myers's view: "On paper, guys think [a woman owning her own home is] awesome. [But] not all guys are OK with it."

When Ms. Myers began looking at condos in 2003, she told her boyfriend about her plan to buy. Like many women homebuyers, she felt she could make the purchase regardless of where their relationship went, rather than needing to wait for marriage. Her boyfriend, however, wasn't happy about her plans. The problem: He couldn't afford to buy his own home.

"It was definitely a sore subject. I just stopped talking about it with him, which took a lot of the fun out of it," she says. "On Sundays, all I wanted to do was look at the classifieds." Ms. Myers ended the relationship because of his attitude toward her purchase, among other issues.

Protecting her boyfriend's feelings was an issue for Jennifer Dion, a 33-year-old high-school counselor in Nashua, N.H., who bought a one-bedroom condo in 2003. Ms. Dion had looked at condos for three years but was concerned that a purchase would hamper her long-distance relationship with a man in Ohio. They went back and forth on whether one of them would move.

"I didn't buy because I was waiting on the relationship. If we got engaged, I knew we could buy something better together," Ms. Dion says. What's more, she adds, buying her own home would signal that she wouldn't be moving to Ohio. "I felt like if I bought, the relationship would fall apart as a direct result," she says.

The couple eventually broke up. The day after the split she made her offer on her condo. She regrets not buying sooner: While they debated moving, interest rates on mortgages rose a full percentage point, and condo prices for the type of unit she wanted rose by 10%.

Ms. Dion is in a new relationship with a homeowner. She's open to moving, she says, but she would want to keep and lease her property.

Frances Largeman, a 30-year-old editor in Birmingham, Ala., was 26 and dating mostly men in their 30s when she bought her first home, a condo in Washington, D.C. Most were impressed, she says, but many asked if she had help paying for it.

"I got, 'Wow! How old are you?' " Ms. Largeman says. "Some of them said, 'Your father must have helped you.' "

She began a relationship in 2001 with a man three years her junior, who eventually moved in and helped with chores, repairs and shopping but not the mortgage. Decorating and other aesthetic decisions were hers, and he felt it wasn't as much "his place" as hers. Two years later, the pair shopped together for a house, but Ms. Largeman was alone the day she found the house they chose. She also made the down payment on the home and held its title -- and the domestic stresses on the relationship worsened.

"I got major resistance," Ms. Largeman says. "He made me feel like I wasn't making good choices, and I'd regret this."

Ms. Largeman was offered a job in Alabama. The two agreed she should accept the offer, but in discussing next steps in their lives, they rethought their relationship and broke up.

"If the woman is in control of the decision-making, it puts a lot of strain on the relationship," Ms. Largeman says in retrospect. "I wanted things to be 50-50."

Ms. Tilton believes that these conflicts eventually will disappear. Members of Generation Y -- the demographic group born after 1980 -- don't link home buying as closely to marriage or relationship status as do women even just a few years older, she says. They see buying as a step toward financial security rather than a symbol of homemaking and settling down.

"The people I've seen in their 20s are not as focused on traditional values," Ms. Tilton says. "Financially, this younger cohort thinks more like older generations -- they're frugal, like veterans, and they're savers who are conservative and streetwise."

Fortunately, Ms. Tilton says, some men are becoming more accustomed to female homeowners. She knows of a 20-something couple in a serious relationship who have each bought homes without conflict.

"He said to her, 'We can rent out of one of our places when we get married,' " Ms. Tilton says.

-- Ms. Hodges is a free-lance writer in Seattle.

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