How to understand trends in women's home ownership

"The myth of the common-law wife persists," Gordon says. This means any break-up means the woman will not be able to get a transfer of property or any assets in their name, which leads to great vulnerability. 

She urges advisers with clients in this situation to coach their clients about understanding the financial risks, or at least getting the female client onto the deeds (if the house is not in the woman's name). 

Older clients

However, the figures from Savills were not all bad news; the data shows that retired women tend to be more property rich, with 3.3m women over 70 owning their homes outright – approximately 40 per cent of all outright ownership in the UK. 

So at the one end of the scale, younger women are struggling to get onto the property ownership ladder; at the other end, older women are sitting on properties worth significant sums. 

Again, this trend is understandable given the prevalence of non-mortgaged homeownership among the baby boomer and pre-Second World War generations, together with longevity statistics.

Savills' Cook adds: "The combination of increasing levels of un-mortgaged homeownership among older households and women’s longer life expectancy means they will ultimately have a greater share of the country’s net housing wealth.”

There have been trends over the past few decades towards women having a greater outright ownership of property in their own names. Gordon

This has been backed up by anecdotal comments from Will Hale, chief executive at equity release specialist Key, who says many of the older clients looking to use equity release are women, whether they need to release money for home adaptations to allow care in the home in later life, or to fund specialist care in a nursing home. 

Certainly the use of the home as an important financial asset is an important part of any financial planning and estate planning journey for both men and women, although it seems that women whose pension pots tend to be much lower benefit more from the assets within their property in later life. 

What will the next 10 years' worth of property ownership statistics look like? If past performance is an indicator of future performance, then we may see another minimal rise in female mortgaged and outright ownership.

However, a combination of marrying later in life, higher representation of women in senior and higher-paid roles and a rise in female clients (as indicated by Spring) might lead to a sharper spike in mortgaged and outright female ownership in the years to come. 

As ever, only time will tell. 

Simoney Kyriakou is senior editor for FTAdviser