Gen Z women who are buying homes on their own are outpacing Gen Z men, according to new survey data released by the National Association of Realtors, even as overall first-time purchasing in the United States has fallen to a record low.
In the NAR survey covering people who bought a home between July 2024 and June 2025, Gen Z single women represented 35% of all homebuyers in their generation. Gen Z single men represented 18%, with NAR reporting that no other generation had a bigger share of single-woman homebuyers than Gen Z. Overall, NAR said Gen Zers made up 4% of all homebuyers during the survey period, and that the share of U.S. homes bought by first-time buyers sank to the lowest level on record going back to 1981.
NAR said the reasons for the gender split are not uniform, but its analysis points to education, income and legal access to mortgages as part of the broader picture. NAR deputy chief economist Jessica Lautz said women are outpacing men in college attendance, which can lead to higher incomes, and that women have also strongly embraced homeownership.
Lautz also linked the shift to legal changes over time. She said women were legally protected to have a mortgage on their own beginning in the 1970s and added that women have “embraced this” and “been very strongly embracing this,” according to the survey discussion.
NAR data also reflect how first-time buyers often face a stricter financing math than later buyers. The report said first-time buyers typically do not have equity from a previous home to use toward a down payment, which can make affordability harder when home prices stay elevated and mortgage borrowing costs remain a significant barrier.
Two homebuyers described the challenges and the work it took to get in the door. Bri LaFluer, now 27 and living in Baldwinsville, New York, said she started looking in 2021 and bought her home in 2023 at age 24 after working two jobs and saving, with financial help from living with her mother. She said: “I’ve always been a really independent person and I just wanted my own place to have peace and quiet by myself,” describing the goal of buying a home that fit her life.
LaFluer’s account highlights how competition can intensify even when mortgage rates are lower than historic highs. The story said historically low mortgage rates turbocharged prices, and that she eventually bought a house built in 1900 with three bedrooms and 1.5 baths for $175,000, about 15 miles from Syracuse. She said: “I feel like it was meant to be and this just ended up being the perfect house for me and my dogs.”
Another buyer, Mariah Berry, described a different path that leaned on saving while navigating unstable housing situations in her early 20s. She said she avoided going out and drove an “old beat-up car” rather than spending money on lifestyle, after experiencing periods when she and her boyfriend were bouncing between living in short-term rentals and couch surfing with friends.
Berry bought her two-bedroom, one-bath home in Charleston, Tennessee, in 2023 at age 23. The report said she paid a $7,000 down payment and financed the rest with a 30-year mortgage at 6% interest, buying one of two units in a ranch-style duplex for $218,000. She said: “I do think it’s pretty frickin’ awesome that I’m a homeowner and that I became a homeowner at 23,” and added that after submitting an offer, “I wanted to puke.”
NAR said Gen Z homebuyers are also more likely than buyers in other generations to be unmarried, a factor it said helps explain why the single-woman share is higher for Gen Z than in other age cohorts. It said that across generations, single women made up a quarter of all homebuyers during July 2024 to June 2025, while single men accounted for 11%.
The survey underscored how broader housing affordability pressures persist for younger first-time buyers. NAR said aspiring Gen Z homeowners are typically getting started in their careers, may not be married, and may have student loans to pay off, and that their median annual income of $76,000 as of 2024 was the lowest compared with homebuyers in other generations.
Even with some market cooling in recent months, NAR said home prices remain a challenge, noting that the median U.S. home sales price stood at $417,700 last month and was up 0.9% from a year earlier, according to its data. NAR also said some Gen Z buyers offset the challenge with family help, with many looking into community grants or other payment assistance, and that 1 in 10 tapped their 401(k) retirement savings plan to put toward their down payment.
On the asset-price side, other economic indicators can also matter for affordability decisions. At the time of this article’s publication vintage, the 30-year fixed mortgage rate in the Federal Reserve’s series MORTGAGE30US was 6.36%, and the median sales price of houses sold in the series MSPUS was $403,200, according to FRED.
For buyers like Berry and LaFluer, the pattern is less about finding a single perfect moment and more about accumulating the resources needed to compete—whether by saving longer, using family support, or combining down payments with financing—to secure a home of their own.