Homeownership Rates by Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity

Homeownership is a key source of wealth for many American families and an important driver of broader economic activity (PDF). Yet, some demographic groups have persistently lower homeownership rates than others. This means they are not participating in this wealth-building channel to the same extent.

In our May 2024 American Economic Association paper, we found that adults identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer and/or questioning (LGBTQ+) had a homeownership rate that was 19 percentage points below that of their straight cisgenderCisgender describes a person whose current gender identity corresponds to their sex assigned at birth (i.e., not transgender). (non-LGBTQ+) peers, at 53% versus 72%. LGBTQ+ adults were also more likely to have a mortgage as opposed to owning their homes outright.

We also found variability within the LGBTQ+ adult group: Transgender (trans) people and bisexual people had the lowest homeownership rates, while lesbian women had the highest. Disaggregating data by sexual orientation and gender identityAn individual’s sexual orientation and gender identity are viewed as separate and distinct. For a more thorough description of these terms, see the Human Rights Campaign’s glossary. revealed significant distinctions, but such disaggregation is rare in the literature because of data limitations. The U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey, however, has a very large sample size and contains questions on both these characteristics.Despite the dataset’s large sample size, response rates are low. As detailed in the Census Bureau’s technical documentation (PDF), weighting adjustments (as we do here) helps mitigate potential nonresponse bias, but results should be interpreted with caution. For additional information on the measurement of sexual orientation and gender identity, see this working paper (PDF) by the Census Bureau’s Thom File and Zachary Scherer. Using this source, we combined data from July 2021 to October 2023 to better understand homeownership and mortgage trends among LGBTQ+ subgroups.

LGBTQ+ Adults Are Less Likely to Own a Home, More Likely to Have a Mortgage

As a group, LGBTQ+ adults had a lower homeownership rate than non-LGBTQ+ adults. We also observed gaps when looking just at homeowners. For example, 69% of LGBTQ+ homeowners had a mortgage, as opposed to owning their homes free and clear, compared with 64.2% of non-LGBTQ+ homeowners.

When analyzing the data by LGBTQ+ subgroups, several nuances appeared:

• By sexual orientation, bisexual people had the lowest rate of homeownership, with only half reporting that they owned their homes. Straight people reported the highest rate of homeownership, with more than 7 in 10 people owning their homes.
• By gender identity, trans people had the lowest homeownership rate. Similar to the bisexual group, only half of trans adults were homeowners. Cisgender (cis) men and cis women had similar levels of homeownership, at 72.3% and 68.9%, respectively.

The groups who were less likely to be homeowners were also more likely to have a mortgage when they did own homes. Bisexual people and trans people were the two groups most likely to have a mortgage, at 73.2% and 66.4%, respectively. This perhaps indicates that they had fewer financial resources at their disposal when they purchased their homes and needed to rely more on financing. Indeed, in previous work, we found that female same-sex couples had significantly less median household wealth than mixed-sex couples, and that LGBTQ+ adults had lower and less stable incomes than non-LGBTQ+ adults.

Homeownership Disparities Remain after Accounting for Sociodemographic Variables

What could be contributing to these gaps in homeownership by sexual orientation and gender identity? We used a linear regression to account for differences in age, marital status, household income, education, living in a metro area or not, and presence and number of children.

Overall, we found that disparities in homeownership remained significant. When not including these variables in our model, LGBTQ+ adults were 19 percentage points less likely to be homeowners than non-LGBTQ+ adults. After controlling for these variables, LGBTQ+ adults were 5 percentage points less likely to be homeowners than non-LGBTQ+ adults. This means that income, age, marital status and other controls explained some, but not all, of the differences. Income was the most important predictor in the model.

Homeownership Gaps Are Largest for Trans, Bisexual Adults

The figure below shows homeownership rates by sexual orientation and gender identity. This is our model without the control variables.Gaps for LGBTQ+ subgroups were significant in the full model. For specific coefficients, refer to Table 1 in our American Economic Association paper “LGBTQ+ Homeownership in the United States” (PDF). In general, cis men had higher homeownership rates than cis women, who in turn had higher homeownership rates than trans people, across all sexual orientations. There was one exception: Lesbian cis women had a higher homeownership rate than gay cis men, though this difference didn’t reach statistical significance. In terms of reliance on financing, three-quarters of bisexual trans people and bisexual cis people had mortgages—the highest share of the LGBTQ+ subgroups.

Homeowner Populations among LGBTQ+ Subgroups

SOURCES: Authors’ calculations using the U.S. Census Bureau’s Household Pulse Survey, July 2021 to October 2023.

NOTES: Figure shows homeownership rates for LGBTQ+ subgroups and 95% confidence intervals. Person weights were used to achieve population level estimates.

Could Discrimination Play a Role in Lower Homeownership Rates?

Trans people whose sexual orientation was gay or lesbian, bisexual, something else or “I don’t know” had homeownership rates that were among the lowest of all the LGBTQ+ subgroups. They and bisexual cis women not only had the lowest homeownership rates (under 50%), but they were also most likely to have a mortgage as opposed to owning their homes free and clear. These disparities remained statistically significant even after controlling for the aforementioned sociodemographic variables.

To explore the potential role of discrimination in these gaps, we analyzed data from the Federal Reserve’s 2021 Survey of Household Economics and Decisionmaking (SHED). In that survey, transgender and nonbinary adults and adults identifying their gender as “other” were over five times as likely as straight cis men and straight cis women to report experiencing discrimination while renting or buying a home in the previous 12 months. Bisexual people reported the second-highest level of housing discrimination. While it doesn’t indicate a causal relationship, given that trans people and bisexual people had the lowest homeownership rates, the overlay of SHED data suggests the possibility of discrimination playing a role in these groups’ lower homeownership rates.

Notes

1. Cisgender describes a person whose current gender identity corresponds to their sex assigned at birth (i.e., not transgender).
2. An individual’s sexual orientation and gender identity are viewed as separate and distinct. For a more thorough description of these terms, see the Human Rights Campaign’s glossary.
3. Despite the dataset’s large sample size, response rates are low. As detailed in the Census Bureau’s technical documentation (PDF), weighting adjustments (as we do here) helps mitigate potential nonresponse bias, but results should be interpreted with caution. For additional information on the measurement of sexual orientation and gender identity, see this working paper (PDF) by the Census Bureau’s Thom File and Zachary Scherer.
4. Gaps for LGBTQ+ subgroups were significant in the full model. For specific coefficients, refer to Table 1 in our American Economic Association paper “LGBTQ+ Homeownership in the United States” (PDF).