Women make progress on housing

We know interest rate rises are hurting. But if you have to economise, and then some, to meet your repayments  (we have plenty of good resources online to help you – see below) take some comfort from the fact that women are getting ahead in bricks and mortar.

CoreLogic’s 2022 Women & Property report for Australia and New Zealand shows women are narrowing the property gender gap, with the share of female purchase of property rising over time.

In 2021, 28.3% of property purchases made were by female owners, up from 27.4% in 2020 and 27.3% in 2019. Over the same period, the portion of male purchases declined, from 29.6% in 2020 to 28.7% of purchases in 2021. The past decade has seen an average of 42.9% of joint male and female purchases, down slightly from the previous decade average of 43.5%.

At the same time, Australian women have higher rates of home ownership in more expensive markets, the report found. Rates of female home ownership were highest in Greater Sydney (31.9%), including the Sydney SA4 submarkets of Eastern Suburbs (37.1%), North Sydney and Hornsby (37.0%) and City and Inner South (36.2%). Comparatively, rates of female home ownership are lowest in Regional WA (21.7%) and Greater Darwin (24.0%).

Meanwhile, the smallest differences in rates of home ownership were across Regional Victoria (where the rate of male home ownership was 1 percentage point higher than female ownership) and Greater Sydney (where the difference was 1.3 percentage points).

Buying your own roof over your head is still a great idea, if you can work it into the budget.