Men, rather than women, are more likely to miss out on home ownership as Australia’s housing affordability crisis worsens, new data shows.
Women in relationships are also more likely to be homeowners in Australia following rising house prices over the past year.
Single men of all age groups are less likely to have bought a home on their own, but younger women have a much harder time getting up the property ladder than younger men.
The typical Australian home now requires someone to earn $118,000 a year, making it impossible to own a property unless the borrower buys with a partner or earns a particularly high salary.
Real estate data group CoreLogic found that 68.2 per cent of women across all age groups owned at least one property compared to 67.4 per cent of men.
“High-level data shows promising parity in home ownership in Australia, where residential real estate is a key driver of wealth and has implicitly become a vital part of a comfortable retirement,” its Women and Property report found .
Men, rather than women, are more likely to miss out on home ownership as Australia’s housing affordability crisis worsens, new data shows (pictured, a Sydney auction)
“The survey also reveals that women generally place more importance on home ownership than men.”
But the majority of women who owned property had bought it with someone else, mainly their husband or boyfriend, and 53.9 per cent of them had bought in partnership.
In comparison, 51.2 percent of men had shopped with someone else.
Of the properties women owned with another person, 81.8 percent did so with their husband or boyfriend, compared to 14.5 percent in a same-sex relationship purchased with their wife or girlfriend.
“This means that one in eight joint home and property owners co-owned a property with a same-sex couple,” according to the CoreLogic report.
When it came to owning at least one property of their own, 50.2 percent of women had done so, compared to 51.9 percent of men.
Women under 30 were more likely to rely on loved ones for accommodation: 39.7 percent lived with family or friends without paying rent or food, compared to 37.6 percent who rented.
Of women born after 1994, only 27.3 percent owned a rental investment property, compared to 51.6 percent of men.
But when it comes to Generation Z, born after 1997, only 5.7 percent of women in that age group owned an investment property, compared to 18.1 percent of men.
Property data group CoreLogic found that 68.2 per cent of women across all age groups owned at least one property compared to 67.4 per cent of men (pictured, women at Royal Racecourse Randwick (Sydney).
“The higher incidence of affordability constraints for young women is also reflected in the income discrepancy between Gen Z men and women,” CoreLogic said.
‘More than half of Gen Z women reported earning less than $70,000 a year.
“Some of the most common challenges seen by women had to do with rising prices, saving a deposit, affordability and competition in the market.”
The CoreLogic survey data, based on an online survey of 1,006 people in early February, was released on Friday, a day after official loan financing data showed how unaffordable housing is.
Australia’s average new mortgage in January was $615,178, requiring a salary of $118,303 to qualify for a loan or a level well above the average full-time salary of $98,218.
A 20 per cent mortgage deposit of $153,794 would buy a home worth $768,972, slightly above Australia’s median house and unit price of $765,762 in February.
The average new loan in New South Wales in January was $770,914, according to data from the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
That means an individual or couple would need to earn $148,253 to qualify for a loan, according to banks that now lend to borrowers 5.2 times what they earn.
That type of loan would buy a $963,642 house on Sydney’s southwestern outskirts, in a suburb like Liverpool, with a 20 per cent mortgage deposit of $192,728.
This is below the city’s median house price of $1.396 million in February, following an 11.7 per cent rise in the year to February, CoreLogic data showed.
Record levels of immigration are causing housing supply shortages and Premier Anthony Albanese and state Labor premiers have promised to build 1.2 million homes over five years, starting in July.
Very few women also work as tradesmen with builders in short supply during a population boom.
Due to a shortage of builders, very few women also work as tradesmen (pictured, a man working at an apartment construction site in Melbourne)
Only 58 women worked as bricklayers in the 2020-21 financial year, representing just 0.7 per cent of the 8,536 Australians in the trade.
Among the carpenters, of a total of 53,531, 287 were women, that is, 0.5 percent, according to data from the Tax Agency.
Catie Williams, vice president of product development at construction software projects group InEight, said something as simple as toilet facilities was driving women away from a career in construction.
“Construction workplaces are not typically designed for women; there is a lack of toilet facilities, which can be a challenge on some sites,” she told Daily Mail Australia.
‘Temporary facilities in workplaces are often unisex and are often poorly maintained or overused.
“As a result, women report that they face problems such as a lack of appropriate facilities available to them, and a major problem is feminine hygiene in workplaces.”