Female-only real estate investors significantly lag their male counterparts in fast-tracking wealth creation through property, an analysis of New Zealand’s home ownership reveals.
CoreLogic’s 2024 Women & Property report released ahead of International Women’s Day, found while female-only owner occupier rates were higher than men, they fell behind significantly when it came to investment properties.
The fourth edition of the report, which provides an update to the state of home ownership for men and women across New Zealand as of January 2024, shows the proportion of female-only owner-occupied properties is 22.9% compared to male-only owner-occupied figure of 20.7%.
On the contrary, CoreLogic’s examination of investment stock identified female-only ownership rate fell to 21.6%, while male-only ownership was notably higher at 26.3%.
CoreLogic report author and chief property economist Kelvin Davidson said there were several factors explaining the tendency for more men to own investment properties than women, but as suggested in previous reports pay and financial literacy were two likely contributing factors.
“The gender wage gap means that, in theory at least, males can build financial wealth a bit faster, allowing for earlier and more investment in rental properties,” he said.
“There is some evidence that financial education and literacy is higher among males too, potentially giving them more awareness of different options.”
The report found 22.2% of homes across all dwellings are owned exclusively by one or more females, slightly less than the 22.7% owned by males. The remaining 55.0% of homes have mixed gender ownership.
The 50-basis point gap between female-only and male-only ownership equates to less than 8,000 properties.
A year earlier, the same figures were 22.0%, 22.5%, and 55.5%. Mr Davidson said while these changes since early 2023 are minor, there’s been a small shift towards single gender ownership, for both females and males, with the mixed-gender share dropping by 50 basis points. Previously, 2023’s figure for mixed-gender ownership had been a small rise from 2022.
In terms of the value of property, female-only stock had a median value of $650,532 in the latest results, versus $675,975 for male-owned dwellings.
Gender-owned property tr
