A new report released by CoreLogic suggests addressing gender income equality could also help close the gender wealth gap as it pertains to real estate over time.
Released to coincide with International Women’s Day, CoreLogic’s inaugural Women and Property: State of Play report boosts evidence of the relationship between the gender pay gap and the gender wealth gap.
The report analysed a 2021 snapshot of property ownership by gender across Australia and New Zealand, by matching ownership gender with 41.2 per cent of Australian properties, and 72.6 per cent of New Zealand properties.
CoreLogic International’s GM Financial Services & Insurance Solutions Milena Malev said there has been a lot of emphasis on understanding access to wealth and earnings for women, but much of that has focused on income from wages, salaries, and wealth accumulation in superannuation.
“Using CoreLogic’s extensive property data universe, we sought to understand rates of female property ownership,” Ms Malev said.
The report’s author, CoreLogic’s Head of Research Eliza Owen, said unsurprisingly, the report found that rates of male property ownership were generally higher than women “but with important distinctions that highlight the relationship between the gender wealth gap and the gender pay gap, and have implications for institutional response”.
“CoreLogic estimates Australia’s residential real estate to be worth over $7 trillion,” Ms Owen said.
“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.”
The report found there were higher rates of property ownership among men than women in both Australia and New Zealand.
Furthermore, property exclusively belonging to owners identified as female represented 26.2 per cent of those analysed across Australia, compared with 20.3 per cent across New Zealand.
Conversely, property exclusively belonging to owners identified as male represented 29.9 per cent of the properties analysed across Australia, compared with 22.9 per ent of the properties analysed across New Zealand.
In both countries, the most common type of ownership was ‘mixed gender’ ownership, where both men and women had ownership of the property.
This accounted for 56.8 per cent of properties in New Zealand, and 43.9 per cent of properties in Australia. The mix of male and female ownership implies two or more incomes were used to buy the property.
The higher rate of mixed-gender ownership in New Zealand means that women have a higher portion of total – sole or joint – ownership (77.1 per cent) compared with Australian women (70.1 per cent).
In Australia, Greater Melbourne and Regional Victoria were the areas with the highest level of gender parity in ownership rates, with less than two percentage points separating male and female rates of ownership.
Melbourne also had the lowest rates of properties owned by mixed genders at 38.4 per cent.
The largest discrepancy between exclusively male and female ownership in property was across Regional Western Australia, where female owned property represented 19.8 per cent of those analysed compared with 29.3 per cent owned by men.
Across both Australia and New Zealand, rates of female ownership of property tended to be higher in major cities.
In Australia, female property ownership is higher where dwelling values are higher, and incomes are typically higher, which reinforces the idea that property ownership is ultimately a function of income, and addressing the gender pay gap could also help fix the gender wealth gap in property.
“This wealth gap becomes a particular challenge around retirement, and it’s well documented that if you still have rental or mortgage costs at the time you retire, then you have a much higher incidence of falling into poverty,” Ms Malev said.
