Property Point

“Oh, my dear lady we couldn’t possibly approve you for a home loan unless you were married and you were buying a property with your husband … of course, if you know a man who could go guarantor on the loan for you that is something we might look at. But, no, we have pretty clear rules about not giving loans to the fairer sex.”

This would have been the response from an Australian bank manager right up until the 1970s if a woman had had the temerity to apply for a home loan.

However, times were changing and some women in the 1960s dared to believe that maybe, just maybe, they had the intellectual capacity to understand the responsibilities of a home loan and, since they had jobs and an education, the means to repay a loan. Radical stuff.

In early 1971, the Bank of NSW (now Westpac) decided that since women could vote, work, graduate from university and stand on their own two feet without the support of a male, it made sense that they should be entitled to take out home loans. Other banks soon followed suit.

It seems unbelievable now that women were ever discriminated against in this way, but the change is one of many that have taken place over the past 50 years for women, and their rights, in Australian society.

I imagine that around the time that my imaginary bank manager delivered his condescending spiel to the audacious female loan applicant, many male real estate agents would have been equally as dismissive of women.

No doubt a male agent might have made eye contact with the woman when pointing out the features of the kitchen and the laundry but that would have been the only significant change of focus away from the “man of the house”.

Like a dinosaur, that type of agent would not survive today. Women are central to the sales process and are, at least, equals when it comes to the big decisions.

Of course, often a woman is buying a property by herself and there is no one else to take into account. Sometimes it’s two women buying together and there is, again, no bloke on the scene.

But when it comes to a male and female couple buying a property, it is often the woman taking the lead, asking a lot of the questions.

I sold a property to a couple last year and the woman had been the contact point for me. She had all the questions, she rang me with the offer and did the negotiating. All of which is absolutely fine.

The only problem was that when the husband rang me with a question during the time leading up to settlement, I didn’t have his number saved in my phone. He just gave me his name and didn’t mention the address of the house he was buying so I initially didn’t know who I was talking to.

After asking a couple of vague questions I worked out who I was talking to but it taught me a lesson about making sure I get to know all parties in the sale.

It’s worth remembering for all of us in business that when you are dealing with a couple, just because one person does most of the talking and seems to be more actively involved, it doesn’t mean the other person has less of a role.

It might be that one person in the couple doesn’t like dealing with sales people but, behind closed doors, that person could be the one raising objections, highlighting the positives, driving or preventing the deal.

Of course if there’s a husband and wife, and the woman doesn’t like the house, your chances of selling it to them are similar to the possibility of seeing winged porcine beasts soaring through the skies above.

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