Episode Four: Keosha Burns, Vice President of Public Relations for Chase Home Lending

Real Talk About Homeownership   Did you know that nearly 20 percent of new homeowners are single women? Even in the face of pay gaps and other gender-centric challenges, women are finding ways to invest in houses, condos, and apartments of their own. To discuss this trend, Women on the Move host Sam Saperstein calls on Keosha Burns, Vice President of Public Relations at Chase Home Lending. Keosha is a homeowner herself, and speaks candidly about her challenges and triumphs.    “Once I came around to wanting to buy a home, I had about $10,000 in credit card debt that I needed to tackle,” she admits. “I also had student loans, but my student loan debt was not outrageous. I was making that payment just fine. So I decided to tackle the credit card debt first.”   She says she sat down with her grandfather who took out a piece of graph paper and created a plan to aggressively pay down her debt. With his guidance, she had it paid off in about six months and was able to save another few thousand dollars on top of that! Keosha acknowledges that each woman will need to create a financial plan that works for her unique situation, but says that anyone who has been bitten by the homeownership bug should start by taking a long, hard look at her financial profile. Without a thorough analysis of income, spending habits, and debt, tackling a giant investment like a mortgage is bound to backfire.   “This is a huge transaction,” she says. “The biggest purchase most people will ever make in their life. And you need to make sure you're not just relying on someone else to tell you what you can afford to buy.”   Single women homeowners making waves Why are more and more single women buying homes? It used to be that purchasing a home was something that went hand-in-hand with settling down, getting married, and starting a family … but recent studies show that women aren’t interested in waiting. Many are eager to create a stable foundation for their financial futures, but Keosha points out that the single women driving this home-buying trend have a variety of backgrounds and motivations.   “I see a couple of groups. There’s this older cohort of women, often dealing with a divorce or separation of some kind, who are trying to maintain their lifestyle for their family,” she says. “I think that's a big portion of the single women home buyers. And then you also have this younger Millennial cohort that is focused on their careers. They're determined to build wealth and home ownership is a big part of that.”   In a previous role, Keosha launched a campaign to attract Millennials to homeownership through education and open communication, so she’s especially attuned to this group’s needs. She insists that if companies want to connect with female home-buyers in this demographic, they can’t just hit them with the same old messaging. They need to understand what women are looking for, how they're living their lives today, and how their dreams are shaping their homeownership goals.   “Telling these women, ‘You need to be part of a family to afford to make a purchase,’ or even just showing images of big suburban homes, it won’t work,” she says. “There are all different types of houses and people who buy them. We need to make sure that people know our industry embraces that diversity, and that we’re there for them.”   She rounds out the conversation by urging women interested in homeownership to be bold, ask questions, and give themselves permission to dream big!