Rise of the ‘She-Elites’: Wealthy Women Emerge as Luxury Real Estate Market Leaders

Wealthy women are emerging as a force to be reckoned with when it comes to snapping up high-end homes in the U.S.—and they’re being dubbed the “she-elites.”

The growing role of female multimillionaires as major players in the luxury real estate market was highlighted in the Coldwell Banker Global Luxury’s Trend Report 2025.

Women with a net worth of $5 million or more now own 15.2% of high-priced residential properties, according to data from the Atlanta-based company Wealth X.

What’s more, prosperous women are gathering momentum not only in buying, but also in selling big-budget properties.

“We are seeing an extraordinary evolution in home design that reflects the changing dynamic of luxury real estate,” says Jade Mills, president of Jade Mills Estates. “Women, especially, are powerful decision-makers that are making critical choices about where and how they live.”

Although the overall domestic real estate market was sluggish last year, its high-end segment remained robust throughout 2024–with women as its “silent driver.”

The number of homes sold for more than $1 million surged 7.1% year over year in 2024, which was lower than in 2021 and 2022, but still higher than any other year in the data’s 23-year history, says Hannah Jones, Realtor.com® senior economic research analyst.

The nationwide luxury home price threshold soared to the highest level in the data’s history last year, at $1.55 million, up 11.5% year over year. 

“Despite a challenging housing market, the luxury segment picked up last year as luxury buyers tend to be less affected by elevated mortgage rates,” adds Jones. 

The trend report predicts that deep-pocketed women—touted as “the new face of wealth”—will play increasingly outsized roles in the thriving luxury real estate in the coming years.

McKinsey & Company, the strategy consulting firm, has previously said that many younger women stand to inherit a great deal of wealth from their husbands, who tend to be older and have shorter life expectancies.

So by 2030, the firm projected, American women would control the majority of the $30 trillion in assets held by aging baby boomers, which nearly equals the projected annual GDP of the U.S.

For now, men in the older age bracket of 35–64 years still edge out women in luxury homeownership. But among millennials and Gen Z, single women own more homes.

In one recent study, women under 35 made up 54% of luxury-home owners.

The past decade has seen a growing number of women come into their power as business leaders in finance and technology sectors, and the COVID-19 pandemic turbocharged that trend, according to the report.

And women are calling the shots not only at work, but also in their households.

Married women have seen their influence surge as they emerged as “silent drivers” of the buying and selling of luxury real estate, even if they might not be the sole decision-makers controlling the purse strings.

A survey by luxury property specialists included in the Coldwell report has found that 94.5% of respondents said that women either share decision-making power in home purchases or are the deciding authority on the matter.

What those numbers mean in practice is that even if women do not call all the shots when it comes to buying an ultrapricey home, they are now playing a bigger role in the decision-making process than ever before.

Meanwhile, the influence of homebuyers who are single women with no kids, commonly known as SINKs, is also on the rise.

With no responsibility to spend their hard-earned money on child care, school tuition, or college funds, SINKs have more expendable income to put toward real estate.

The share of single female homebuyers increased to 20% in 2024 while single men made up just 8% of buyers, according to the National Association of Realtors®.

At the same time, women are increasingly buying luxury properties as investments, including vacation homes in fashionable locales and income-generating rentals in metro areas.

These revelations dovetail with recent research from Fidelity, which found that 71% of women own investments in the stock market, up 18% year over year.

“It’s encouraging to see the number of women taking control of their finances swell over the past three years,” Sangeeta Moorjani, head of Tax Exempt Market and Lifetime Engagement for Fidelity Investments, said in the report.