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Gay Americans can take pride in these house prices.
Over the last three years, home prices in neighborhoods popular with cohabiting, married or partnered gay men have grown by an average of 23%, according to research by the real-estate website Trulia. Similarly, prices have risen in neighborhoods that are popular with cohabiting, married or partnered gay women — by an average of 18%. “In honor of Gay Pride this year [the last weekend in June in many U.S. cities], we wanted to revisit these neighborhoods and find out what’s changed,” says Trulia housing economist Ralph McLaughlin.
Among the areas characterized as male “gayborhoods,” prices rocketed 65% to $260 per square foot in the 92262 ZIP Code of Palm Springs, Calif., between 2012 and 2015 and rose 47% to $768 in the 94131 ZIP Code, which comprises the Noe Valley, Glen Park and Diamond Heights neighborhoods of San Francisco. One theory: “If you are not raising children, you have two male incomes and have more money to devote to improve their home environment,” says Gary Gates, a demographer and research director of the Williams Institute for Sexual Orientation Law and Public Policy at the University of California.
Among neighborhoods popular with lesbians, prices rose 64% to $389 per square foot in the Redwood Heights/Skyline area of Oakland, Calif.
Many of these neighborhoods are in metro areas that have also experienced sharp price gains. But housing in almost all of the so-called gayborhoods was more expensive than in nearby sections, Trulia found. Homes in the Castro neighborhood of San Francisco cost $948 per square foot, which is 34% more expensive than the San Francisco metro area as a whole, while West Hollywood, Calif., and Provincetown, Mass., are 123% and 119% more expensive, respectively. Guerneville, Calif., was the only area less expensive than its wider metro-area comparable, but only by 2%.
Where gay men’s neighborhoods are getting more expensive
| ZIP Code and city | Median price per sq. foot, June 2012 | Median price per sq. foot, June 2015 | % change in price per sq. foot, June 2012–June 2015 |
| 92262: Palm Springs, Calif. | $158 | $260 | 65% |
| 94131: Noe Valley/Glen Park/Diamond Heights, San Francisco | $522 | $768 | 47% |
| 92264: Palm Springs, Calif. | $174 | $240 | 38% |
| 48069: Pleasant Ridge, suburban Detroit | $137 | $188 | 37% |
| 94114: Castro, San Francisco | $699 | $948 | 36% |
| 90069: West Hollywood, Los Angeles | $611 | $802 | 31% |
| 75219: Oak Lawn, Dallas | $185 | $225 | 22% |
| 33305: Wilton Manors, Fort Lauderdale, Fla. | $249 | $292 | 17% |
| 19971: Rehoboth Beach, Del. | $193 | $203 | 5% |
| 02657: Provincetown, Cape Cod, Mass. | $604 | $616 | 2% |
| Average for all gay men’s neighborhoods | $188 | $238 | 23% |
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Note: Only ZIP Codes with at least 1,000 persons are included in the analysis. Average growth rate is weighted by number of gay households, so the listed percentage increase is different than the simple percentage change between average price per foot in 2012 and 2015. Data in this report are different from our report in June 2012 because of new MSA definitions and observed time period of listings (month vs. previous year in the June 2012 report) | |||
Using the 2010 Census, McLaughlin calculated the share of households with same-sex couples in every ZIP Code. Focusing on the top 10 among these ZIP Codes, he then calculated the median price per foot of homes for sale in each ZIP Code on Trulia as of June 1, 2015, and compared it with June 1, 2012. He excluded neighborhoods with populations of less than 1,000. Gayborhoods are defined in the census as those with the highest proportion of same-sex cohabiting couples. (The census doesn’t measure sexual orientation.)
Why the discrepancy in price growth between the two? “The top gay-men neighborhoods are places where prices were already high relative to their metros and were not hit as hard during the housing crash as other less expensive neighborhoods,” McLaughlin says. Gay female couples are more than twice as likely to have children as are gay male couples, he adds, “so it could be that gay women seek up-and-coming neighborhoods with good schools to raise their children.”
Many of the neighborhoods on the list of gayborhoods are also places where people are less likely to have children, Gates says. “This survey is picking up neighborhoods where proportionally, fewer households have children in them,” Gates says. “This survey could be picking up a very practical economic reality.” Wellfleet and Provincetown, both on Cape Cod in Massachusetts; Rehoboth Beach, Del.; and Palm Springs are also popular among retirement communities, he says. “The Castro in San Francisco, while popular with both gay men and lesbians, is not high for child-friendly amenities for families,” he says.
Where gay women’s neighborhoods are getting more expensive
| ZIP Code and city | Median price per sq. foot, June 2012 | Median price per sq. foot, June 2015 | % change in price per sq. foot, June 2012–June 2015 |
| 94619: Redwood Heights/Skyline, Oakland, Calif. | $237 | $389 | 64% |
| 30002: Avondale Estates, suburban Atlanta | $114 | $173 | 52% |
| 02130: Jamaica Plain, Boston | $303 | $414 | 37% |
| 94114: Castro, San Francisco | $699 | $948 | 36% |
| 95446: Guerneville, north of San Francisco | $270 | $335 | 24% |
| 01060: Northampton, Mass. | $197 | $216 | 10% |
| 19971: Rehoboth Beach, Del. | $193 | $203 | 5% |
| 01062: Northampton, Mass. | $190 | $196 | 3% |
| 02657: Provincetown, Cape Cod, Mass. | $604 | $616 | 2% |
| 02667: Wellfleet, Cape Cod, Mass. | $326 | $323 | -1% |
| Average for all gay women’s neighborhoods | $133 | $157 | 18% |
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Note: Only ZIP Codes with at least 1,000 persons are included in the analysis. Average growth rate is weighted by number of gay households, so the listed percentage increase is different than the simple percentage change between average price per foot in 2012 and 2015. Data in this report are different from our report in June 2012 because of new MSA definitions and observed time period of listings (month vs. previous year in the June 2012 report) | |||
There are other possible limitations to house-price rises within a gayborhood. A neighborhood may need to be “socially liberal” for an increase in same-sex households to increase house prices, a 2011 study by researchers at Konkuk University in Seoul and Tulane University in New Orleans found. They looked at Columbus, Ohio, and, adjusting for factors such as housing, crime and school quality, analyzed house prices with how residents voted in a 2004 ballot initiative on the Defense of Marriage Act. They found a “positive and significant” impact on prices, but only in more liberal locales.
Diversity is good for the economic development of cities and housing prices, according to Richard Florida, an urban theorist and author of “The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community, and Everyday Life,” a book that was republished last year a decade after it was first released.
Florida found that high-tech hot spots followed the locational patterns of gay people. Other measures he created, such as the Bohemian Index, which measured the prevalence of artists, writers and performers, had similar results. “Artistic and gay populations,” he wrote, “cluster in communities that value open-mindedness and self-expression.”