Gender Gap Widens For Young Single Women Looking To Buy A Home

Single men were more likely to own a home than single women, but the gap has narrowed sharply in recent years and will be nearly closed in 2021. but, Recent research showed its breadth widening again last year, shedding light on the home-buying challenges facing single women.

In 2016, 19.4% of young single women owned a home compared to 29.6% of young single men, a gap of 10.1%. The gap narrowed over the next five years as more and more women entered the workforce. Record numbers for 2020 – and Women’s income began to riseBy 2021, the gap was just 1.8%.

But that progress was wiped out in 2022. In the first year of the pandemic, childcare and caregiving options became so fluid that a significant proportion of women quit their jobs to take on caregiving responsibilities. In addition, the median income of women is significantly lower than that of men, Receive approximately 82 cents per dollar men are earning As a result, young single women have less choice on affordable housing listings than young single men.

Zillow chief economist Skylar Olsen said, “Single women have made great strides in closing the home ownership gap, but the pandemic has shown that progress is not always linear.” Despite showing remarkable resilience as it returns to work, single women homeownership rates will take a big hit in 2022. Rising mortgage rates and volatility pose affordability challenges The road to affordable homeownership remains an uphill battle, and may require creative solutions or solutions, because the It may even double.”

After increasing to 28.6% by 2021, the homeownership rate for single women fell to 24.5% last year, wiping out almost half of the increase since 2016, when the homeownership rate for single women was a record low of 19.4%. I was. At the same time, the home ownership rate for single men will rise by 2.7 percentage points to 33.1% in 2022.

Single women looking to buy a home in Pittsburgh, St. Louis, or Detroit (one of the 50 largest metropolitan areas in the US) will find the highest share of affordable listings. Single women in Atlanta, Baltimore, Washington, D.C., and Raleigh, North Carolina are the most competitive with single men in the buying and selling market. Single women in these metropolitan areas, on average, can afford to buy at least 2% of all active listings, and at least 90% of the listings available to single men. Meanwhile, Cincinnati, Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Minneapolis, Jacksonville, and New Orleans have the widest gender disparities in home purchase prices, with single women buying less than 70% of the homes available to single men. .