Where single women are buying property in Australia — and why their purchase power matters

More single Australian women are buying their own homes, with a report published by Ray White revealing 71,900 sales to this cohort in 2022, up from 64,680 sales in 2014. As a proportion of all single buyers, men have historically outnumbered women but the gap is closing with purchasing rates now closer to parity at about 12 percent of sales each.

Ray White chief economist Nerida Conisbee said rising home values meant the proportion of all single buyers was falling, from 26.2 percent of purchases in 2014 to 24.5 percent in 2022.

“An interesting dynamic, however, is also occurring by gender,” Ms Conisbee said. “A drop in single male purchasers is driving the decline whereas the number of single female buyers as a proportion of total buyers remains steady. By volume, the number of purchases by single women has risen by over 11 percent since 2014.”

Ms Conisbee said increased education about the importance of home ownership in building wealth and government schemes such as the First Home Guarantee and State Government stamp duty waivers and concessions have driven more women to buy. McGrath CEO John McGrath said the trend in career women buying property on their own began about two decades ago.

“When I started in real estate 40 years ago, it was very rare to conduct an auction and have a 28-year-old female on her own buy the property,” Mr McGrath said. “Nowadays when you put a well-located, beautifully designed apartment block on the market, the first 10 apartments will be sold to single career women.”

Ms Conisbee said most single women preferred to buy affordable apartments in central city locations.

“Overwhelmingly, the largest number of purchases are of units in areas where very large numbers of units are available. Topping the list nationally is Melbourne CBD where there has been 7,750 purchases of apartments by single females since 2014. The Gold Coast,however, has also made several appearances on the list with Surfers Paradise coming in second (3,386 purchases).”—

The data shows Victoria has the highest proportion of single female purchasers and NSW the lowest. Ms Conisbee said very high levels of development in Melbourne had given single women more opportunities to buy. Incidentally, greater supply in Melbourne is a key reason why median home values have not increased as much as other cities over the past year. CoreLogic data shows Melbourne home values have risen just 3.2 percent over the past 12 months compared to 9.6 percent in Sydney and 15.9 percent in Brisbane.

Single women seeking to buy a house also targeted more affordable city fringe and regional areas. The statistics was calculated using Valuer General data on more than five million sales from 2014 to 2022 and cross referencing first names using an artificial intelligence application called Genderize to deliver the largest research sample available documenting single female purchasing patterns.

Top 10 suburbs for single female purchases (apartments) 2014-2022

Top 10 suburbs for single female purchases (houses) 2014-2022