Ladies, Ladies… One at a Time

Get ready to hear the ramblings of an irritable, peri-menopausal millennial, feminist, real estate agent, business owner and mother. My team recently asked me for my perspective on women buying property and what I am noticing as a woman working in real estate. Apparently, they thought an article for our website would be a nice way to show people who we are and what we care about as a company.

So, blame them for now subjecting the public to my thoughts and opinions. Single women are becoming a significant force in the Australian property market, and honestly, it feels a little scandalous, powerful and very exciting. In the current whirlwind of domestic violence against women, gender pay gaps and manosphere nightmares, maybe this is one area where we can grab hold of a little more of our own power.

Because it really wasn't that long ago that financial independence looked very different for Australian women. In 1971 (only 55 years ago), the Bank of New South Wales became the first Australian bank to grant loans to women without requiring a male guarantor. Just sit with that one for a minute.

Obviously, women could own property before 1971, but being legally allowed to own something and being able to walk into a bank, borrow money and buy it independently are two very different things.

This period also coincided with more women entering the workforce, building careers and heaven forbid, earning money for themselves. We can thank the Baby Boomers (for once) for helping drive that shift. More women began returning to paid work after having children, staying in the workforce and pursuing further education. For context, women's labour-force participation in Australia was only around 34% in 1961. By 2011 it had climbed to 59%. Then Gen X women really started to take off and infiltrate the workforce. Think Sex and the City: Carrie and the girls with their lofty career goals, questionable financial decisions, fabulous shoes and general refusal to take shit from men.

And now here we are.

Women have come remarkably close to closing the property ownership gap. Recent Australian research found 62.7% of women own residential property compared with 64.4% of men.

Earlier property-title analysis also found that approximately 24.4% of Australian residential property was solely female-owned, compared with 27.5% solely male-owned and 43.5% jointly owned by men and women. Not bad considering one of our major banks only decided 55 years ago that perhaps a grown woman could be trusted with a loan without Dad coming along to supervise. As a woman myself and a mother of daughters, I recognise how important this is. Property can be an incredible way to secure your future; whether that's simply owning the roof over your head or using property as an investment to build wealth, BUT!

Property can also be a complete bloody money pit. Buying property is hard, and weirdly, they don't hold a class for it at school. And just like changing the oil or a tyre on your car, I don't think property is something we have traditionally made a point of teaching our girls.

I am, of course, generalising (as a proud tyre-changer), but historically, property has felt like a very male space. Whether it's a husband taking the lead or a father making the decisions alongside his adult daughter, there is a dynamic I have seen many, many times in real estate. Every real estate agent trembles at the sight of a Boomer dad armed with a tape measure and a notepad accompanying his adult daughter through the “home of her dreams.” You know he's about to inspect the roof cavity. And the gutters. And somehow determine the structural integrity of the entire dwelling by aggressively tapping one wall. But underneath the humour, I think there's something important happening here. If you haven't grown up seeing women take the lead in property decisions, and nobody has ever actually taught you how buying property works, it can be incredibly intimidating to suddenly be expected to understand it as an adult. Then there's the fear of sounding dumb when you ask questions about things you feel like a fully grown adult should already know:

Yield. Equity. Capital growth. Compound annual growth rates. Strata. Settlement. LVR.

But how are we supposed to know something we were never privy to in the first place? I had absolutely no idea about real estate until I started working in the industry. I remember sitting quietly and nodding along while the men in the office spoke about yield and compound annual growth rates, secretly writing down a list of terms so I could Google them when I got home. And now I do this for a living. Maybe that's partly why I feel such a passionate pull towards helping more women move into this space. Because while we've done incredibly well in the relatively short period we've had genuinely independent access to finance, there is still plenty of room to grow. Women are almost at parity with men when it comes to owning property generally, but investment property is where the gap remains.

Current research shows 14.2% of Australian men own at least one residential investment property compared with 11.4% of women. Because purchasing property can absolutely feel intimidating. You're facing off with a salesperson at a home open, wondering whether you're making the right decision about the suburb, whether you're paying too much, whether there's something horribly wrong with the house that everyone except you seems to understand, or whether the whole thing is going to fall down in the next strong wind. Being on the buyer's team has fulfilled me in ways selling property never did and even more so now that I can see the sisterhood starting to barge its way onto the scene.

So what am I actually noticing? More women. Yay! And the girls are super savers. Despite the tired narrative that women are “spendy”, what I see doesn't necessarily support that stereotype at all. Give women the opportunity to earn a decent income, and I am seeing them save, build deposits, buy property and kick some serious financial goals.

One of my clients is just 23 years old and buying her second investment property (her third property altogether) Excuse my bragging, but it makes me feel like a proud mumma. The conversations women weren't always privy to are happening around us now. We have access to the information, we have careers, we have incomes and, most importantly, we're increasingly having the conversations with each other.

Women talking to women about money. Women talking about investing. Women talking about property. Women openly wanting to build wealth. And I want to see more of it.

Solo male investors are still ahead of women in Australia, but I don't think that gap is destined to stay there forever. The girls are showing up! And I have a feeling we're only getting started.

Besides, after spending generations being told we were the caretakers of the home… It's about time we bloody owned them!