“The Gender Gap in Housing Returns” by Paul S. Goldsmith-Pinkham (Yale) and Kelly Shue (Yale). Posted on SSRN on March 23, 2020: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3559892
“Gender Price Differentials in the Housing Market: Evidence from a Repeat-Sales Approach” by Sean O'Connor (University of Oklahoma), Brent Norwood (University of Oklahoma), Myongjin Kim (University of Oklahoma), and Leilei Shen (Kansas State University). Posted on SSRN on December 18, 2018: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3307563
GS (2020) does not cite ONKS (2018), not even once.
Abstract 1:
Housing wealth represents the dominant form of savings for American households. Using detailed data on housing transactions across the United States since 1991, we find that single men earn 1.5 percentage points higher unlevered returns per year on housing relative to single women. The gender gap grows significantly larger after accounting for mortgage borrowing: men earn 7.9 percentage points higher levered returns per year relative to women. Approximately 45% of the gap in housing returns can be explained by gender differences in the location and timing of transactions. The remaining gap arises primarily from gender differences in execution prices: data on repeat sales reveal that women buy the same property for approximately 2% more and sell for 2% less. Women experience worse execution prices because of differences in the choice of initial list price and negotiated discount relative to the list price. Gender differences in upgrade and maintenance rates, and preferences for housing characteristics and listing agents appear to be less important factors. Overall, the gender gap in housing returns is economically large and can explain 30% of the gender gap in wealth accumulation at retirement.
Abstract 2:
Do women pay more than men for similar housing? We utilize repeat-sales housing transactions drawn from ZTRAX to examine if gender gaps exist in house purchase prices and loan to price ratios. Our analysis utilizes repeat-sales and include house and neighborhood-by-time fixed effects to control for unobserved differences in the quality of houses and their associated neighborhoods. We find that female homebuyers pay a 2% premium on average. In addition, female homebuyers’ loan to price ratio is 3 percentage points lower than that of male buyers. We also show that female buyers pay less when the seller is female than when the seller is male. However, the gender price differentials and loan-to-price differentials are disappearing in more recent years. Our estimates have implications for the levels and persistence of gender differences in homeownership and wealth accumulation.