Therese Easley fought off nine other bidders to buy her house in Sandtown last year, the first home for the 40-year-old single woman who grew up in a public housing development in East Baltimore.
Ann Anderson, at 26, recently closed on her three-bedroom Federal Hill rowhouse, paying for it with 100 percent financing.
And Kelly Mulligan, 29, moved into her one-bedroom condominium in Bolton Hill last month, where her mortgage is no more than the rent on her former apartment in Fells Point.
Across Baltimore, single women - old and young, black and white - are buying houses, many for the first time, at rates far exceeding the national average.
According to a 2006 survey conducted by the National Association of Realtors, 40 percent of city homebuyers last year were single females, nearly twice the national average and the Baltimore County rate.
"The numbers blew me away," said Joseph T. "Jody" Landers III, executive vice president of the Greater Baltimore Board of Realtors. "I called the National Association of Realtors and asked them to check the raw data.
"When I saw these figures I was like, 'What's wrong with the single men?' Women are just smarter than men, what can I say?" Landers said.
Last year was the first time that the Greater Baltimore Board of Realtors participated in the survey, so there are no historical figures for comparison in the city.
While single homebuyer figures are generally higher in urban areas, Baltimore's numbers still appear unusually high.
For example, 26 percent of homebuyers in Chicago were single females in 2006, while the figure was 33 percent in Memphis, said Paul Bishop, manager of real estate research for the National Association of Realtors.
But real estate agents say that single women have long been a strong force in the city's housing market and that, anecdotally, their numbers are only growing.
Most, they say, are women who rented for several years and decided to make the plunge, often taking advantage of housing assistance and loan programs offered through the city and state, and through groups like Live Baltimore.
And they're planting their roots all over the city, from the gentrified, lively areas of Federal Hill and Fells Point to the quieter, more leafy neighborhoods of Northeast Baltimore.
"It's amazing," said Alyssia K. Essig, 33, a real estate broker with Long & Foster. "I've been doing this for nine or 10 years, and I've always had a strong percentage of my annual sales being single women. Now it's especially younger women - 23 or 24 years old - buying their first house on their own. And I'm like, 'Wow, you go girl.'"
No one seems to be able to entirely explain Charm City's female friendliness.
"I don't think there's any one single reason," said Dunbar Brooks, manager of data development for the Baltimore Metropolitan Council.
Brooks said he checked U.S. census data and found that the proportion of the city's female residents hasn't changed. "I guess it's just the attractiveness of the city," he said. "And when you really look for affordable housing prices, you're more likely to look in the city."
The average sale price of a home in Baltimore City last year was $173,157, according to the Metropolitan Regional Information Systems Inc.
Essig and other real estate agents say affordability and the urban lifestyle make Baltimore an especially attractive option for those coming from the Washington market, where the average sale price in the District last year was $528,463.
"They're realizing it's a good investment, and they're buying in the city because they want to have a life," Essig said.
Laura Cundiff is one. The 36-year-old bought a Federal Hill rowhouse in August, moving from Arlington, Va. She commutes to Washington, where she is a consultant for IBM.
"The housing prices were much better than the D.C. area," Cundiff said. "I liked the community feel and the manageable urban environment."
Though the numbers might seem out of whack, Bishop said that when one compares the data with the most recent census information, it makes sense.
'Really kind of unique'
"What you find is, there's a much higher than national average share of all households in Baltimore that are female households," he said. "It's really kind of unique. We haven't seen that elsewhere."
In the most recent census figures available, from 2005, the number of female heads of households who own homes was 9.1 percent nationally but 19.6 percent in Baltimore.
For renters, the figure was 19.6 percent nationwide and 25.8 percent in Baltimore.
Baltimore's percentage of married couples, at 35.3 percent, was also significantly lower than the national average, which was 61.5 percent.
"There is a pretty significant difference in the underlying demographics of homeowners," Bishop said.
One downside of the large number of single women buying houses is that they've been more affected by the regional and national rise in foreclosures and subprime loans.
Ruth M. Louie, president and CEO of Baltimore Community Lending, said of the 39 homeowners the not-for-profit financial institution has helped with refinancing because of predatory real estate loans, most were women.
Landers said that over the past three to four years, Realtors in the Baltimore City market began noticing more homebuyers who are single, especially females.
Even the figure for single men is almost double the national average, Landers said, making single people 55 percent of the market.
"The market has kind of adjusted to the fact that maybe the city doesn't have the best schools situation," Landers said.
Schools factor out
"So, you have people moving in for whom schools are not that big of a factor," he said, noting that only 3 percent of survey respondents said schools were a factor in their decision to buy in Baltimore.
"One of the other things this kind of belies is the notion that's out there in the market that the city is not safe," he said.
Landers also noted that proximity to entertainment was among the top factors in deciding to buy in the city.
Proximity to Canton's attractions was a selling point for Victoria Meyers. The 36-year-old closed on her first house on March 29, a $285,000 Canton rowhouse with a backyard, after renting for about five years.
"I was scared," she said, explaining why she didn't buy earlier. "I'm part of a group of women that grew up in another generation when you bought a house with your husband. I didn't want the responsibility. I wanted someone else to take care of it, even though with everything else in my life, I had taken care of it."
While most women buying houses in the city are first-timers, Tonya Maria Matthews is already on her second. The 32-year-old traded in a rowhouse in Belair-Edison for a larger detached house in Lauraville last year.
As part of her financing, she qualified for a Federal Housing Authority loan that allows her to finance and fix up her house at the same time, leaving her with $15,000 to play with.
Now, Matthews is hoping to start a single women's home improvement group.
"I have a slightly fixer-upper, and I've been going back and forth to Home Depot to learn how to do things," she said. "I've just graduated up to small things like painting."
Matthews wants to get together a group of women that can help one another on projects, such as the wall repair she needs to do, and landscaping. "If we learn how to do those kinds of things in a group, we'll be able to do it faster," she said.
Matthews' Realtor, Shonda Nicole Gladden of Urban Living Realty, thinks it's a great idea and hopes to contact some of her single female clients to start getting together this summer.
Gladden, who specializes in first-time homebuyers, said single male clients seem more interested in living in Washington. She said 65 percent of her clients are single women.
"A lot of us are buying, and we don't have husbands or mates and we don't really need it," said Gladden, who counts herself among the group. "As far as owning a home goes, we can handle that on our own."
sumathi.reddy@baltsun.com