Woman Property Ownership In South Africa
In celebration of all things women - especially during Women's Month, we would like to point to the fact that woman has now officially become the backbone of new property ownership in the South African property market.
According to the Lightstone, women have bought more properties than men in every quarter from the first quarter of 2019 to second quarter of 2021, either by themselves or in partnership with men. Men nevertheless are involved in 47% of all property transactions, either on their own or in partnership with a woman.
The volume of female transactions first surpassed male transactions in 2009 and the gap has increased since then and accelerated in the last two years.
These findings emerge from the analysis of data on female property buyers over the period January 2019 to June 2021 in which sales after the hard lockdown of Q2 in 2020 have been consistently higher than in the five quarters preceding it. While the trend line for total number of female and male buyers is increasing steadily over the period, the gap between female and male buyers is widening.
Female only buyers account for between 22%-23% of all transfers by private individuals and when combined with joint male-female purchases, the number rises to between 49%-50%.
The average value of transfers involving males is greater than those involving females. Both female and male buyers prefer to purchase property jointly, as the table above indicates. The percentage of female-only transfers is increasing, as are first time female buyers. Some 53% of female buyers purchased homes in the R500 000 to R1.5m price during the last twelve months, with 22% buying in the R1.5m to R3m range, 19% buying properties valued at less than R500 000 and 6% buying homes valued at more than R3m.
The majority of female buyers are between 24-41 years old, with the next largest category being the 50-64 followed closely by the 42-49.
Most female buyers opt for Freehold properties, with the percentage remaining consistent between 53-53% from 2018 to 2021, while Sectional Title has hovered consistently at just under 30% while Estates have been consistent at around 17%.
Gauteng is the most popular province for female buyers, followed by Western Cape, KwaZulu-Natal and the Eastern Cape.