Property price surge has widened the gender pay wealth gap, says Corelogic

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With International Women’s Day here, new CoreLogic numbers show that women continue to be underrepresented in the property market, contributing further to the current gender pay wealth gap.

In short, CoreLogic findings show that women still have less overall share of property ownership than men.

The stats show that in the 12 months to January 2022, the total value of Australia’s residential market increased from just over $7 trillion to $9.7 trillion. This leaves women disadvantaged due to the percentage difference between female property ownership (26%) and male property ownership (29.9%) recorded in January of this year.

CoreLogic International GM Financial Services and Insurance Solutions, Milena Malev said that “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.”

Investment property at centre of gender wealth gap in real estate

CoreLogic Australia’s Head of Research, Eliza Owen explains that around 70% of the discrepancy between male and female residential property ownership is explained by the higher percentage of investment properties owned by men.

CoreLogic statis show that men own 36.4% of all investment properties nationally, while women only own 29.1%. The difference in these percentages amounts to over 105,000 additional investment properties owned by men than women in Australia.

Furthermore, CoreLogic’s 2022 Women and Property Report found that Australian men are more likely to own houses and women to own units. According to Owen, this leaves women at a disadvantage because “detached houses generally accumulate more value over time than units” and this means that “house owners accrue a lot more value over time compared to unit owners'.”

The gender pay gap and its implications

In addition, the gender pay gap saw an increase from 13.4% in November 2020 to 13.8% in November 2021. Malex explains that “the current discrepancy in incomes between men and women would see men save a 20% deposit for the current median dwelling value around a year faster than women.”

On a more positive note, CoreLogic has found that Australian women are gradually narrowing the property gender gap. This is seen by the increase in percentage of property purchased by women slowly increasing over time. In 2019, women purchased  27.3% of property, compared with 29.3% in 2021. According to Owen, “this positive trend may start to reflect greater gender parity in home ownership overtime.”

If you are looking to break into the property market to buy a home, have a look at our home loan comparison page to get a better view of current home loan rates.

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