Homeownership among America's single women fell 4.1 percentage points in 2022, cutting progress by half
Owning a home is particularly challenging for women in the US, who still earn just 82 cents for every dollar earned by men. Without a partner, the options for home-buying are especially slim. According to new research from Zillow, the average, employed single woman in the US can afford only 8.9% of active listings nationally. That’s 84.5% of the homes that single men can afford.
The percentage of homes in the US owned by single women, which hit an all-time low in 2016 at 19.4%, grew to 28.6% by 2021. But in 2022, half of that gain was wiped out when single women’s homeownership dropped to 24.5%.
“Single women had made great strides in narrowing the homeownership gap, but the pandemic reminded us that progress is not always linear,” says Zillow chief economist Skylar Olsen.
Meanwhile, the homeownership rate for single men increased by 2.7% in 2022 to 33.1%.
For single women looking to live in one of the largest metro areas in the US, their best bet is in Pittsburgh, St. Louis, or Detroit. These cities have the highest share of affordable listings for single women—but even that’s only around 30%.
Zillow found that single women might be able to compete better with single men in Atlanta, Baltimore, Maryland; Washington DC; and Raleigh, North Carolina. In those places, the average single woman would only find 2% of listings affordable, but at least that’s 90% of the listings single men can afford.
Cincinnati, Kansas City, Oklahoma City, Minneapolis, New Orleans, and Jacksonville, Florida, have the largest gender gap in homeownership. Single women in these cities are able to afford fewer than 70% of the homes single men can afford.
Not surprisingly, homes in California are the least affordable all around, with single women being able to afford 0.1% to 0.3% of active listings. In Sacramento, housing is outright unaffordable for the average single woman, who would be unable to afford any of the homes for sale that the average single man could afford.
“With rising and volatile mortgage rates furthering affordability challenges, the road to affordable homeownership remains an uphill battle, and it may take creative solutions or even doubling up in a home to achieve that dream,” Zillow’s Olsen said.
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