A new report from Zillow, the online real estate marketplace, finds that the single women’s homeownership rate declined in 2022 for the first time since 2016. Homeownership has traditionally been the primary wealth-building mechanism for Americans. So any gender gap in homeownership impacts the gender gap in wealth. This can impact women’s ability to plan for retirement.
In 2016, single women’s homeownership was at an all-time low of 19.4 percent. From 2016, the homeownership gap between single women and single men narrowed significantly. In 2021, the gap was only 1.8 percentage points. But in 2022, the homeownership rate for single women was 24.5 percent compared to a 33.1 percent rate for single men. This is a gap of 8.6 percentage points. The decline is puzzling considering single adult women have significantly better educational credentials as a group compared to single adult men.
Zillow reports that “affordable homeownership remains a challenge for women, who generally earn less than men on average, receiving around 82 cents per dollar. As a result, single women have fewer options when it comes to affordable home listings than single men. Using the median household income of single women ages 18 to 65, we found that the typical, employed single woman could afford only 8.9 percent of active listings nationally, 84.5 percent that of men.”