Report Finds Single Women Outpace Single Men in Homeownership

According to a new report from LendingTree, single women are likelier than single men to be homeowners. The report found this was likely to be the case among younger women with better educational pedigree than their older counterparts. Even though women's median take-home pay is 83.6% that of men (per the report), the demographic shift from younger women makes single women more likely to be homeowners than single men. The report found that across the nation, single women own 11.14 million homes, compared with 8.42 million for single men—a difference of 2,719,923. As a total share of the homeownership market, single women comprise 13.01%, while single men account for 9.83%. The report also found that the gap between single women and single men homeowners had slowly expanded since 2022, when single women owned 10.95 million homes, compared with 8.24 million for men (a difference of 2.71 million homes). That represents an increase of 14,780 housing units in the gap between single women and single men. The report noted that the reasons for this gap are still unclear but offers "a few possible explanations." One is that single women are more willing to make sacrifices to achieve homeownership than single men, though the evidence for this is "sparse," the report admitted. Another possible explanation is that women live longer and are more likely to be widowed compared to men, meaning the gap could be at least partially explained by women who outlived their spouses.

On the other hand, there is little indication that single women are beating single men in homeownership due to "disproportionately" benefiting from divorces or through closing the earnings gap, according to the report. The homeownership gap was most pronounced in Delaware and Connecticut. Although neither state has the highest number of single women homeowners, they were the two states with the highest gender disparity. Delaware had a 5.23% difference in the total share of single homeowners, while Connecticut's figure was 5.06%. As far as the states in which single women saw their highest percentage of overall homeownership, New Mexico, Mississippi, and West Virginia led the way, according to LendingTree, with 15.26% of the share of homeowners being single women in New Mexico, compared with 15.07% in Mississippi and 14.73% in West Virginia. States with single women homeowners as higher percentage shares of overall homeownership tended to be in the Southern and Midwestern regions, with New Mexico being the geographic outlier and rounding out the top 10 states after West Virginia were Louisiana, South Carolina, Florida, Alabama, Kentucky, Ohio, and Maryland. Single men comprised the highest percentage of homeowners in North Dakota, South Dakota, and Alaska. The share of single male homeowners in North Dakota is 13.52%, with South Dakota at 13.10% and Alaska at 12.79%. In addition to being the states with the highest proportion of single male homeowners, these were the only three states where single men homeowners outnumbered single women homeowners. States with the highest percentage of single male homeowners tended to be clustered in the Northern region of the U.S. After Alaska, the rest of the top 10 states with the highest share of single male homeowners were West Virginia, New Mexico, Montana, Wyoming, Louisiana, Michigan, and Wisconsin. LendingTree also found that the states with the highest gaps between single women's and men's homeownership were mainly located along the Eastern coast of the U.S. After Connecticut, these were Maryland, North Carolina, New Jersey, South Carolina, Florida, New York, Massachusetts, and Mississippi. Regarding practical advice, the report recommends that women carefully vet different lenders to find the best deals and understand that it is illegal for lenders to discriminate against them based on gender. "While single women may be more likely to be homeowners than single men, that doesn't mean buying a house is easy," the report said.