Bold new player shaking up Aussie real estate big time

One group has come from nowhere to become the most influential buying force in Australian property.

Over the past two decades, single career women have become an influential buying force in the property market.

When I started in real estate 40 years ago, it was very rare to conduct an auction and have a 28-year-old female on her own buy the property. Nowadays when you put a well-located, beautifully designed apartment block on the market, the first 10 apartments will be sold to single career women. This fundamental change in female participation in the market is reflected in the fourth edition of CoreLogic’s Women and Property report, which finds that more Australian women own property than men.

The report is based on a survey conducted by Lonergan Research in January 2024. Using a new methodology, they surveyed 1,006 Australians aged 18 and over in capital cities and regional areas.

Over the past two decades, single career women have become an influential buying force in the property market. Picture: Sam Ruttyn

The report found that 68.2 per cent of women own property compared to 67.4 per cent of men. That’s not a big difference, but it does underscore the impact of single career women in the 2000s.

The key driver for women is the desire to attain their own independent financial security. Clearly, they view property ownership via a home and/or an investment as a great way to do it. The survey found that 49.2 per cent of women rate property ownership as extremely important compared to 36.9 per cent of men.

But when you drill down on the data, we see that female property ownership is dominated by Millennials, Gen Xers and Baby Boomers. More than 70 per cent of women in each of these age cohorts own property. Things change within the next generation, which is the Gen Zs, aged between 18 and 29 years.

In this age cohort, only 27.3 per cent of women own property compared to 51.6 per cent of men. Just 5.7 per cent of Gen Z women own an investment property compared to 18.1 per cent of Gen Z men. By comparison, the portion of Millennial women who own property is 72.5 per cent and it goes up among Gen Xers at 75.8 per cent and Baby Boomers at 83.3 per cent.

The research suggests this may be related to differences in income and work among Gen Zs. Almost 70 per cent of Gen Z men are employed full-time compared to 43.9 per cent of women. And about 56 per cent of Gen Z women are earning less than $70,000 per year compared to 42 per cent of men.

As a result, young women are saying it’s hard to save for the deposit, stamp duty and other buying costs.

This is where the Bank of Mum and Dad is stepping in. The research also found that 69.2 per cent of the properties owned by women were houses compared to 64 per cent for men. Men owned more apartments, potentially reflecting the fact that more men own investment properties, and generally speaking, investors tend to buy apartments for affordability and higher rental yields.

While the primary role of a home is to provide shelter and a treasured space for family connection, Australian residential real estate offers a lot more.

Our market has a spectacular history of reliable long-term capital growth. In my view, property ownership is the key to wealth generation and a comfortable retirement in Australia.

The report shows that property price growth has outpaced wage growth in every state and territory for 20 years. Last year, home values nationally rose 8 per cent (or a median $61,000) compared to a 4.3 per cent increase in wages.

* John McGrath is the founder, Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer of McGrath Estate Agents