Women now outnumber men among sole owners of non-subsidised residential property in South Africa, though men continue to hold the higher-value assets, according to analysis by property data firm Lightstone. The crossover comes early: sole female buyers overtake sole male buyers at age 29 and remain ahead in every older cohort.
The pattern is metropolitan. The five largest metros accounted for 60% of purchases by women, and Johannesburg, Tshwane and Ekurhuleni together made up 66% of the 42,323 purchases recorded by single women across those municipalities. Cape Town posted the highest average price, with the inland metros clustered a good deal lower.
Ownership is also skewed by property type. For every 100 male sectional-title owners there are 130 women; in estates the ratio is 112, while freehold ownership sits near parity at 103. That distribution points to security and lifestyle amenity as buying criteria, and to sectional title as the affordability entry point.
| Metro | Average purchase price, single women buyers |
|---|---|
| Cape Town | R1.8m |
| Johannesburg | R1.3m |
| eThekwini | R1.2m |
| Tshwane | R1.2m |
| Ekurhuleni | R1m |
Financing data suggests this reflects current activity rather than accumulated legacy. Mortgage originator BetterBond reports that women submitted slightly more than half of its bond applications over the past year, against 49.89% from men, with the prime rate at 10.5% and the national bond approval ratio at 63.5%. Its national head of sales, Bradd Bendall, characterises the shift as women treating property as long-term wealth planning rather than a lifestyle milestone.
Rival data corroborates it. ooba Home Loans recorded single women as 53% of first-time buyer applications in 2025, rising to 57.7% in KwaZulu-Natal. The average age of a female first-time applicant has fallen by seven years over the decade to 39, while average salaries among ooba’s female applicants have risen 76.3% since 2015, outpacing consumer inflation.
Part of this is not a gender story at all. Single-applicant mortgages now dominate the youth market irrespective of sex. Some 76.9% of applications from buyers aged 18 to 24 in 2026 came from single applicants, up from 68.4% a decade earlier, with 65.5% among those aged 25 to 34. Later marriage, urbanisation and smaller households are reshaping the applicant pool, and women make up the larger share of it.
Lending structure has done work too. Zero-deposit loans accounted for 60.2% of first-time buyer applications in the first quarter of 2026, while cost-inclusive loans, which fold transfer duty and bond registration into the advance, have risen from under 0.5% of first-time applications in 2016 to nearly 16%. ooba puts the average first-time deposit at R103,842, or 8.2% of purchase price, down from 9.6% a year earlier.
The value gap has an identifiable source. Statistics South Africa’s second-quarter labour force survey put women’s unemployment at 37.5% against 30.3% for men, with labour force participation at 54.9% versus 64.4%. Estimates of the earnings gap range from 16% to above 30% depending on the measure used. Women buying more often but at lower price points is consistent with that.
Conditions are tightening. FNB’s house price index eased to 5.2% in June from 5.7% in May, and the bank expects growth to drift towards 4% by year-end. The Reserve Bank lifted the repo rate to 7% in May, ending its easing cycle, and estate agent satisfaction fell from 77% in the first quarter to 59% in the second. Whether the female share keeps climbing will depend less on preference than on whether affordability holds at the entry level, where most of that buying sits.