How Today’s Environment Is Impacting Buyers, Sellers And Tenants

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.

The report found that 68.2% of women own property compared to 67.4% 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% of women rate property ownership as extremely important compared to 36.9% 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% 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% of women own property compared to 51.6% of men. Just 5.7% of Gen Z women own an investment property compared to 18.1% of Gen Z men. By comparison, the portion of Millennial women who own property is 72.5% and it goes up among Gen Xers at 75.8% and Baby Boomers at 83.3%.

The research suggests this may be related to differences in income and work among Gen Zs. Almost 70% of Gen Z men are employed full-time compared to 43.9% of women. And about 56% of Gen Z women are earning less than $70,000 per year compared to 42% 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% of the properties owned by women were houses compared to 64% 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% (or a median $61,000) compared to a 4.3% increase in wages.