Women & Property

The January 2023 edition of the CoreLogic Women and Property provides an update to the state of home ownership for men and women across Australia.

A key finding of the CoreLogic report states that female ownership is lower than male ownership in Australia. Of the properties analysed across Australia, females were associated with ownership of 26.8% of properties, and partial ownership of 43.4% of properties. This implies at least partial female ownership of 70.1% of homes. Males associated with home ownership made up a notably higher 29.9%, and partial ownership of 43.4%.

Female ownership was the most common across units in Australia, where females were associated with 35.7% of units, compared to males being associated with 34.6% of units. Joint male-female ownership was inferred for 29.7% of units in Australia.

Furthermore, there is a larger difference in rates of home ownership by gender across states and territories with a higher concentration of the labour force in the resources sector, such as Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia. This may in part be attributable to women making up a relatively small portion of highly-compensated sectors across the states, such as mining and construction. Dwelling ownership among women tended to be higher in more populous, high-value dwelling markets. For example, 37.7% of Sydney’s Eastern suburbs properties was associated with female ownership, which is one the highest rates of female dwelling ownership across Australia.

CoreLogic reports that investment property seems to account for a big portion of the discrepancy between men and women. Males were inferred to have the highest level of investment property ownership in Australia at 36.3%. This was higher than 29.5% with inferred female ownership, and it was even higher than joint male-female ownership of investment properties (which was 34.2%).

Source: CoreLogic