This is an MSN.com article that was in the Real Estate section of the web site. It was written by By Debora Vrana and is very detailed about the female real estate market.

Homebuilders jockey for single women's business

Single women are twice as likely as single men to buy a home -- and builders are taking notice. They're betting on features like security systems, built-in vacuums and gourmet kitchens to attract this growing market.

By Debora Vrana

Single female ISO home
The great American condo glut
The art of the lowball offer
Ask 22-year-old Sarvy Danesh what she likes most about the condo she just bought and you'll get a detailed list of design features, including the colorful walls, the modern metallic light fixtures and really sleek sliding glass doors.

"It's happening; it's kicking," said Danesh who is about to graduate from UCLA. "The whole thing is really appealing to the eye."

And it's the eyes of single-women buyers just like Danesh that America's builders are jockeying for. Single women are purchasing homes in record numbers due to low interest rates, increased salaries, good credit earlier in life and later marriages. Last year, they represented 21% of all home buyers, second only to married couples, who still control a lion's share of the market, according to the National Association of Realtors.

"It'd be nice to have Prince Charming, but it's not something I'm going to wait around for," said Danesh, who was able to put about 10% down on her $600,000 Westwood, Calif., condo due to an inheritance. She said her parents began talking to her about the importance of good credit when she was 13. "I don’t need a guy to help me out," she said.

Women-friendly features
To attract single-women buyers, homebuilders -- by and large still a male-dominated group -- are struggling to design specifically for women and to market to them. "You can't ignore the second-largest segment of the market and still be successful," said Walter Molony, spokesman for the NAR. "Men don't get serious about homes until they find the right woman. But women are serious about buying homes now.”

Indeed, single women are twice as likely as single men to buy a home.

To entice women, builders are putting in:

Laundry rooms upstairs;
Skylights in bathrooms for natural light;
Slate floors that are "cleaning friendly";
Security features;
Built-in vacuum cleaners;
Gourmet kitchens;
Name-brand appliances; and
Xeroscapes and other yards with low to no maintenance.
While builders historically haven't focused on specific markets segments, that's all changing. "Builders are getting more sophisticated," said Greg Gieger, a Wall Street analyst with A.G. Edwards & Sons. "They are staring to do market research and build homes for specific markets, designing what people want.”

Gieger pointed to Los Angeles-based KB Home, one of the nation's largest builders, and Bloomfield Hills, Mich.-based Pulte Homes as two of the more cutting-edge builders in this respect.

"Every homebuilder now realizes that women have a big impact on buying homes," said Caroline Shaw, a spokeswoman at KB Home.

Martha's house
In March, homes went on the market in a Cary, N.C. neighborhood created in a partnership between KB Home and style icon Martha Stewart. The houses feature architecture and amenities inspired by Stewart’s own homes, including spa-like bathrooms, large walk-in closets, large glass showers and open shelving in the kitchen.

Ranging in price from the low $200,000s to the mid-$400,000s, the houses got strong buyer interest, with roughly 100 of the 650 single-family homes and town houses selling in one day.

"We always think about what women want, we are women," said Gael Towey, chief creative officer with Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, who helped design the homes. "Women are so much more self-reliant. They are thinking about good investments and they know your home is a good investment."

Towey said the Martha homes have many design features that will appeal to women, especially natural light in the bathrooms. "You just look better in natural light," she said. "You feel better."

Stewart and KB Home are now planning more than 900 homes in the Atlanta area -- all of which are designed to have natural light in the bathrooms -- and will eventually take the Martha-designed homes nationwide, building neighborhoods in Las Vegas, Texas and Southern California.

"It's a home run," said Shaw.

It's all in the details
In California’s Central Coast, builder Roberta Colmer said single-women buyers bought nearly a third of the 30 homes she recently built on a bluff above Morro Bay. Colmer wasn't surprised; she had women in mind as she was building.

"We did certain things to make women feel at home," said Colmer, co-owner of Colmer Construction. "It's the little things that we put in sometimes that women appreciate."

Details like skylights in the bathrooms, security systems, lighting over all mirrors and built-in vacuums helped the $700,000 to $1 million homes sell out quickly.

Norma Petersen, in her 70s, said she loves the built-in vacuum. "It has a long hose and you can easily take it up the stairs."

Petersen bought a Colmer home last year for herself and her 91-year-old half-sister. "It's a good investment for a woman. Nowadays, people don't stay together for long. And women make good salaries now. They might as well jump in."

Growing checkbooks
Petersen has a point. Women collectively earn more than $1 trillion annually and influence $2.4 trillion of the $3 trillion in annual consumer sales, according to the Women’s Mortgage Industry Network, an industry educational group.

That in part seems to be driving their desire to marry later, live alone and buy their own homes.

Ashley Candalaria, a 22-year-old single woman who works with disabled adults, just bought a new $119,000, three-bedroom home in Rio Rancho, N.M. "My mom always taught me to do things on my own. That way, if something bad happens and I get divorced, I’m not dependent on anybody."

By 2010, the number of women-headed households with no spouse will increase to about 31 million, according to Fannie Mae, one of the nation’s largest lenders. Since 1950, the number of households headed by women has increased fourfold, largely due to the longer life expectancy of women, higher divorce rates and later marriages.

"The typical family of four went out with Ozzie and Harriet," said Mark Marymee, a spokesman for Pulte, which builds condominiums for younger, single-women buyers and caters to a lot of widowed or divorced older-women buyers through its active-adult communities for the 55-and-older crowd. "We put more emphasis on research than anyone in homebuilding," he said.

Marymee pointed to security features as one reason a recent condo project in the San Francisco Bay Area had strong interest from single women. Adjacent garages on some units allowed residents to walk straight from parking into their residences, increasing safety, he said. "Women really like security factors and consider that when deciding whether to rent or own," he said.

What do women want?

The importance of women buyers was top of the list for condo developer Justin Zavadil in north Minneapolis. "Women are capitalizing on their salaries and trying to build equity," he said. "They are buying at record rates; we need to put out a product that they want."

To Zavadil, that meant putting in stainless-steel appliances, toilets that don't use much water and softer finishes, including wood ceilings and brick and wood walls. Concrete floors are colder and not as appealing to women, he said.

Zavadil also thought a distaste for yard work made his $250,000 condos a popular choice among women. "Nobody who is working 80-90 hours a week wants to shovel snow and mow lawns," he said.

Still, all this is new territory and even 26-year-old Zavadil isn't sure his women-oriented design features are on target.

"It's a difficult thing," he said. "Who is really sure what women want?"

And in the end, it may really come down to dollars and cents -- the same for any group of buyers. Annie Salmen, 29, is going to buy one of Zavadil’s condos. A renter for more than a decade, Salmen realized she didn't want to still be renting in her 30s. "I was just throwing my money away," she said.