By 2007, Michelle Jackson, a 30-something writer in Denver, held a master's degree, had travelled the world, and was enjoying her social life as a single woman. She also felt the pull to purchase her own home.

"A lot of people in my circle of friends were women purchasing their homes when they got married, but I still felt like I wanted to build my own wealth and buy" Jackson says.

A few open houses later, Jackson was preapproved for a 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage and had put an offer in on a small, one-bedroom home in Denver for $US72,500. She still lives in the home, which was appraised last year at more than double the price she paid.

The news and research about women and money can be dreary. Women earn less than their male counterparts, pay harsher workplace penalties for pursuing parenthood, struggle more with debt, and save less for retirement.

But there's one area of personal finance where single women are outpacing men in the US, and it's a significant one: home ownership.

Single women now account for 17 per cent of home buyers in the US, compared with 7 per cent of single men.

Although women have been ahead of men in  National Association of Realtors data since 1981, the gap has widened even further in recent years, said Jessica Lautz, NAR's managing director of survey research and communications. Property values and mortgage lending imploded after the 2008 financial crisis, and low interest rates have made lending more appealing to new, more frugal buyers.

Single women are also likelier than single men to be parenting on their ownr.

"If you have children, it's definitely going to play a role in where you're thinking of living and how," Ms Lautz said.

Then there are single women's sheer numbers. Today, one in every five Americans 25 years and older has never been married, a sharp contrast to just 9 per cent in 1960, according to the US Census Bureau.

When single women do buy their first homes, they do so at an older age than men, 34 compared with 31, according to NAR research. And women are buying at a lower average price: $US173,000 compared with $US190,600.

Single women also have long had a slightly higher foreclosure rate than men: 73 per 10,000 v 70 per 10,000, Daren Blomquist, a senior vice president with ATTOM Data Solutions, said.

"Because of the wage gap, you see women having to purchase lower value homes and they're more open to risk when they do," Mr Blomquist said. "Typically what causes a foreclosure is some kind of shock, like a job loss. If you have a lower value home that's appreciating less quickly, you have less of a cushion."

For Rachel Weiss, a fashion executive in New York, the thought of owning a home in Manhattan "always seemed so unattainable". Having spent her 30s and some of her 40s in a rent-stabilised studio in the West Village, she accumulated a pile of cash that was sitting dormant in a savings account.

"Buying a home was always in the back of my mind," Ms Weiss said.

She put an offer on a one-bedroom co-op in Chelsea for $US640,000. It was accepted. She moved in last August.

  "I'm in my 40s, and I looked at what my life was like," she said."I'm not married, I don't have kids. I can live alone, and fabulously. I feel empowered."