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New study explores the gender gap in the housing market.
It’s 2022 and gender inequality is still an issue. And now, it’s affecting the already ubercompetitive housing market, as evidenced by real estate provider PropertyShark’s recent study exploring the gender gap in real estate—which has grown exponentially over the past five years.
According to the study, single women can only afford a home in 17 out of 51 top U.S. markets while men can buy in 29. Lucky for female Raleighites, however, the City of Oaks is one of those 17 affordable markets.
To conduct the study, PropertyShark used data on median incomes for men and women from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 statistics, and then applied it to a calculated average monthly mortgage payment. (Affordability was defined as the “upper limit on monthly mortgage payments at 30% of monthly income.”)
When looking at our fair city, PropertyShark found that Charlotte is unaffordable for single women, requiring female buyers to put 35% of their local median income toward a mortgage, while male buyers only put 26% (so much for the Queen City nickname, huh?).
The City of Oaks, on the other hand, only requires 22% of the local median income to be put toward a monthly mortgage for female buyers and 17% for male buyers, making it affordable for both single male and female future homeowners—a stat that makes Raleigh the No. 5 most affordable city for single female buyers! (Though we still acknowledge the 5% disparity, ahem.)
BTN
34: Number of cities single women cannot afford to buy in today. (This number is 10 more than just five years ago.)
22: Number of cities single men cannot afford to buy in today
49%: Amount of median national income single women have to spend to pay a monthly mortgage payment
32%: Amount of median national income single men have to spend to pay a monthly mortgage payment (aka men are barely over that affordability threshold nationally while women are almost 20% over it.)
22: The number of cities where male and female buyers can’t buy, which has risen from 14 since 2017
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