Did you know about the gender gap in home buying?
LendingTree recently released a study that discovered single women are spending more money on their homes than men and married women.
The study looked at data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Survey that compared how women and men spend their money in different categories and found a gender gap in housing market spending.
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Information gender gap in home buying
The Spending By Gender Study reported these key findings:
On average, women pay 1.29 times more on owned dwellings, which include mortgage interest, property taxes, home insurance and other expenses.
Women pay 1.20 times more on property taxes, 1.11 times more on housing and 1.09 times more on mortgage interest and charges compared to men.
Annually, women spend $16,223 on housing compared to the $15,562 spent by men.
In the case of renting, men will spend 1.12 times more on rented homes, including rent, parking fees, maintenance and other home expenses.
Why are women spending more than men on homes? There are a couple of theories why.
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Women prioritize their homes more
Forbes reported that while women may earn less money, they choose to prioritize home buying more than men do.
“There’s some evidence to suggest that women prioritize homeownership more than men and are more willing to make sacrifices to become homeowners,” LendingTree’s senior economist Jacob Channel told the Deseret News. “This can help explain not only why single women tend to spend more on homes that they own then men do but also why single women are more likely to be homeowners, even if they tend to earn lower incomes.”
New findings from Pew Research Center have also found that women under 30 are outearning young men in some U.S. cities.
“In fact, women younger than 30 earn at least as much as men younger than 30 in 22 U.S. metros, including New York, Washington D.C., and Los Angeles,” Channel told Forbes earlier this year. “In another 107 metros, women younger than 30 earn 90% to 99% of what men younger than 30 do. These comparable earnings — combined with a greater homeownership desire — could contribute to higher homeownership rates among single women.”
