Female home ownership rises, but still behind men

The third annual Women and Property Report has been released by property analytics company CoreLogic, showing that while female property ownership has increased marginally in previous years, it still lags behind male property ownership.

According to the report, male-inferred ownership (where the name on property titles suggested a male owner) outstripped that of female-inferred ownership by 3.1 per cent (29.9 per cent to 26.8 per cent), while property owned jointly between males and females was 43.4 per cent.

In spite of the increased portion of male ownership, CoreLogic revealed female ownership in the medium-to-high-density sector trumped the opposite sex by 1.1 per cent.

Moreover, rates of property ownership associated with male names were unchanged, but female names associated with home ownership increased slightly (from 26.6 per cent).

Eliza Owen, head of Australian research at CoreLogic and the report’s author, said that “most of the discrepancy between male and female ownership of property could be explained by ownership of investments.”

She detailed that male-only names “were associated with 36.3 per cent of investment properties,” a rate which exceeds both the share of female-owned investments (29.5 per cent) and jointly owned (34.2 per cent).

“There were some hotspots where women did actually own more of the investment stock analysed than men. These were generally the areas that women had high ownership of dwellings overall, including the North Sydney and Hornsby SA4 region, where women had ownership of almost 39 per cent of investment properties analysed,” she said.

While men own 4.3 per cent more housing stock, females trumped them in ownership of medium-to-high-density stock by 1.1 per cent, while Ms Owen cautioned that this could lead to women missing out “on a chunk of capital gains from the Australian housing market because of the type of properties they are purchasing.”

Over the decade to January 2023, units have achieved an annual growth rate of 3.4 per cent as opposed to the 5.1 per cent recorded among stand-alone homes.

“However, women also tended to own more properties in markets that have a relatively high price point, so those women who are able to access the property market may have done well in terms of long-term capital growth,” Ms Owen added.

Sydney dominated the list of top regions for female-only inferred ownership, with the harbour city’s eastern suburbs (37.3 per cent), North Sydney and Hornsby (36.6 per cent), City and inner south (36.1 per cent), and Ryde (34.7 per cent) joining Melbourne’s inner region (34 per cent) in the top five.

Income remains an important factor in determining whether women enter homeownership or not.

“Research suggests that women are more inclined to invest in real estate than their male counterparts where they have the resources to do so,” Ms Owen said.

“In past reports, we have noted the role of the gender wage gap potentially contributing to women falling behind on asset accumulation, particularly where it may take women longer on average to accumulate a deposit for a home.”

CoreLogic’s analysis of full-time earnings estimated it would take men on average 8.3 years to save a 20 per cent deposit, as opposed to 9.4 years for females. However, Ms Owen caveated this by outlining the over-representation of females in the part-time workforce in comparison to men — 68.1 per cent of the nation’s part-time employees are female as opposed to 38.7 per cent for men — with this factor contributing to the “overall pay disparity between men and women, which may have implications for access to homeownership.”

Moving forward, Ms Owen believes greater financial literacy and education about property investment have the potential to empower women and erode the existing ownership disparity.

She also believes shared equity schemes, which typically target low-income households, can unlock additional female-inferred homeownership by addressing relatively low female wages.

“That’s important not just for women, but any group who is over-represented in low-income households,” she concluded.

[Related: Rising house prices widen gender wealth gap: CoreLogic]