Single women have been gaining on single men when it comes to buying homes. But that progress stalled last year.
In metropolitan areas across the country, young single men are more likely than young single women to own a home, but the ownership gap had been narrowing and almost closed in 2021, according to Zillow, as more women entered the workforce and their incomes rose.
That gap widened last year, according to a new Zillow report looking at home affordability trends among singles ages 18 to 44. That was partly due to the pandemic's continuing outsized hit on working women and rising housing costs.
Nationwide, the home ownership rate for young single women dropped in 2022 for the first time in six years, according to Zillow's analysis of census data for single 25- to 35-year-olds. The rate peaked in 2021.
Nationally, women make an average of 82% of what men make. And single women can afford about 85% of the home listings that single men can afford, according to Zillow. The Philadelphia metropolitan area roughly mirrors that national trend.
Zillow considered a home to be affordable if the estimated mortgage payment for a listing was no more than 30% of income.
The Philadelphia area's median home listing price in February was more than $286,500, according to Zillow. Single women in the region can afford, on average, roughly 14% of available listings, and single men can afford 16.5%.
The region ranks 10th out of the largest 50 metropolitan areas for the share of listings that young single women can afford.
Pittsburgh has the highest share of home listings that are affordable to single women. There, they are able to buy about one-third of listings.
Because of high home prices, young single women in some metros on the West Coast can afford less than 0.5% of homes for sale.
Young single women in Washington, D.C., can afford 100% of the listings young single men can afford. That figure is almost 96% in Atlanta and about 92% in Baltimore.
In the Philadelphia metro area, the home ownership rate for single women ages 25 to 35 in 2021 — the latest year data were available — was about where it was in 2016, according to Zillow's analysis of census data.
Nationally, roughly 19% of young single women owned a home in 2016, compared to almost 30% of young single men. The ownership gap of about 10 percentage points shrank to about 2 percentage points in 2021.
That year, the home ownership rate for young single women grew to almost 29%. But it fell to 24.5% last year. The ownership rate for young single men, meanwhile, grew in 2022 to 33%.
