Women trail men in property ownership

New report from CoreLogic finds Australian women own 3pc less property than men, highlighting gender wage and wealth gap.

Brisbane solicitor Brooke Thomas, then 36, purchased her first home last February on her own using the federal government’s First Home Buyer Lending Deposit Scheme. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen/The Australian

The gender pay gap is causing women to fall behind in the property ownership stakes, a new report from CoreLogic has found.

The property researcher’s inaugural “Women and Property: State of Play report” found men held 3 per cent more property than women across the country.

Exclusive home ownership, meaning multiple people of the same gender on a title, sat at 26.2 per cent for women and 29.9 per cent for men, while sole ownership by gender reported similar levels (24.1 per cent for women and 27.7 per cent for men). Mixed gender ownership sat at 43.9 per cent.

CoreLogic’s head of research Eliza Owen said the “unsurprising findings“ highlight the implications of the wage and wealth gaps, which she believes need to be addressed to close the gap in ownership figures over time.

“CoreLogic estimates Australia’s residential real estate to be worth over $7 trillion. Given there’s a high level of equity held in real estate, if you don’t own property, that’s a big source of household wealth and security you don’t have access to,” Ms Owen said.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics reports the gender pay gap sits at 13.4 per cent. Modelling by CoreLogic based on the average weekly full time earnings for men and women found it would take a woman an additional 10 months (79 months) to save for a 20 per cent deposit on the median dwelling cost of January 2021 compared to a man (69 months).

Of the 76 local Australian property sub-markets analysed, only seven had rates of exclusively female ownership higher than men. Women are more likely to own property in areas where housing is more expensive, linked to higher wages. The opposite is true in cheaper areas, where men are more likely to own than women.

Ms Owen noted the most properties are owned by two people, often a man and woman. The economist said the trend speaks to affordability constraints and the need to have a dual income to buy a home.

“The other element of this is that lone households would have less success getting into the property market. What’s important about that, when it comes to women and real estate, is that women make up over 60 per cent of either single-parent or lone adult households,” Ms Owen said.

“Yet at the Australia-wide level, sole property ownership among women is less than their male counterparts, which means women are over represented in lone households but they’re under-represented in property ownership. “

The report outlined the wealth gap becomes a particular challenge around retirement and correlates to a higher chance of falling into poverty in the twilight years, with property providing a source of wealth accumulation to help maintain living standards.

Data was compiled using CoreLogic’s online platform RP Data. The property database does not hold data on the gender of property owners within its property database, using owner first names to infer gender where possible.