Living in Colorado

In much of the United States, single women are outpacing single men when it comes to homeownership.

This trend may be somewhat surprising, given the average woman in the U.S. only makes 80% of what the average man does. Nonetheless, the data clearly indicates that single women are more likely to own a home than single men are.

For example, in the New York metropolitan area, single women own slightly more than 820,000 homes. In the Los Angeles metropolitan area, that number is around 460,000. On the flip side, single men own about 435,000 homes in the New York area and about 260,000 homes in the Los Angeles area. In both cases, single women owned nearly twice as many homes as single men did.

To determine the number of single homeowners in each metro area, LendingTree, the nation’s leading online loan marketplace, analyzed data from the 2017 American Community Survey. We defined single homeowners as single men or women who live in owner-occupied homes. You can read our more detailed methodology below.

What we found was that in all of the 50 largest metropolitan areas, single women own more homes than single men do. On average, single women own more than 70,000 more homes in metro areas than single men do.

Key findings:

• Single women own considerably more homes than single men do. On average, single women own around 22% of homes, while single men own less than 13% of homes.
• Oklahoma City was the metropolitan area where single men own the largest share of owner-occupied homes, at 16%. Even though single men own a greater proportion of homes in Oklahoma City than they do elsewhere in the country, they still own fewer homes than single women, who own 24% of residential properties in the area.
• New Orleans was the metropolitan area where single women own the largest share of owner-occupied homes. In this area, single women own nearly twice as many homes than single men do: 27% compared with 15%.