BEIJING (CHINA DAILY/ASIA NEWS NETWORK) - An independent apartment has become one of the preconditions for marriage, with about 57 per cent of single women saying it is a requirement, according to a survey jointly conducted by dating website Jiayuan.com and China's biggest real estate broker Lianjia.

That is 16 percentage points higher than the number of single men who hold the same view, according to the survey.

For women who are the only child of their family, the figure jumped to 68 per cent.

Some 69 per cent of single women said their ideal husband-to-be would own an apartment prior to marriage, while only about 10 per cent said they would be willing to live in a rental flat after getting married, an option unacceptable to more than half the female participants in the survey due to a perceived lack of security.

Single women tended to marry men who had property and 14 per cent of them said they would also require their future husbands to write their names on the property ownership certificate.

Some 48 per cent of single women agreed it was acceptable for a newly married couple to live in a flat provided by the wife, compared with a figure of 18 per cent among male respondents, many of whom said they did not want to feel dependent on their partner.

More than half of the singles surveyed hoped they could have a three-bedroom apartment of 90 to 120 sq m as a nuptial home, but smaller flats with areas between 60 and 90 sq m were their actual selection because of housing prices, according to Lianjia.

Zhang Jiarui, an expert with Jiayuan.com, said similar values, emotional attraction and harmonious personalities should be more important factors for a marriage.