Many LGBTQ+ renters are entering prime home buying years. But little data exist about their experiences.

Discrimination that real estate agent Nicole LaGreca experiences isn’t usually blatant, but an encounter a few years ago sticks with her.

LaGreca, who describes herself as queer, masculine presenting, and genderqueer, has faced surprised and dismissive in-person reactions from people she’s first met online or by phone “when your name is Nicole and they’re expecting a certain persona.”

On that day, she was meeting with a potential client at a Port Richmond home for sale, during a tornado warning.

LaGreca said she could feel throughout the meeting that the woman was uncomfortable being in the house with her “to the point where she did end up running out into the storm.”

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The agent with Keller Williams Philly works with a lot of first-time home buyers, including those who are LGBTQ+ and have their own stories of bias.

The LGBTQ+ population is fast-growing and younger than the overall population, and many are entering their prime home-buying years. But not much data exists about the buying and selling experiences of people who are LGBTQ+ and gaps in home ownership.

Federal agencies, housing policy groups, and the real estate industry have in recent years begun to focus on gathering and sharing data about the LGBTQ+ population. Researchers at the Washington-based think tank Urban Institute said much more is needed to identify, track, and prevent discrimination.

Affordability is the top obstacle keeping renters as a whole from becoming homeowners, but renters who are LGBTQ+ are more likely to say it’s a barrier, according to a housing survey of more than 5,000 U.S. residents commissioned by the online real estate brokerage Redfin.

About 900 people who responded to the survey identified themselves as lesbian, gay, bisexual, pansexual, asexual, transgender, intersex, two spirit, or non-binary. Of those, 633 were renters.

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More than half of LGBTQ+ renters surveyed said they probably won’t buy a home in the near future because they can’t afford to, compared to 43% of renters who are not LGBTQ+.

Recent home buyers who are LGBTQ+ also were more likely to say that saving for a down payment was a challenge and that they worked a second job to save enough.

About one in four LGBTQ+ renters surveyed said that they would need financial support from family or friends and that they don’t have that. That’s compared to about one in seven renters who are not LGBTQ+ and said they are in the same position.

LGBTQ+ renters also were more likely to say student loan debt is keeping them from buying a home.

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These renters have been at a disadvantage, especially in the competitive home-buying market of the last few years, said Ife Foy, a real estate agent with Keller Williams Philadelphia.

“Someone who comes from a background that has been marginalized is less likely to be able to compete with someone who is very wealthy,” they said.

And someone with multiple marginalized identities — for example, a Black transgender woman on the lower end of the economic scale — faces compounded challenges.

“I see gatekeeping and systemic racism and classism as a cause of some folks not understanding how to build generational wealth through housing and for others it being second nature for them,” Foy said.

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The Redfin survey found that LGBTQ+ people were more likely to want to own a home in the near future. But LGBTQ+ survey respondents were less likely to be homeowners.

An analysis of limited Census Bureau survey data by the Urban Institute published this summer found that the home ownership rate among LGBTQ+ survey respondents was 51%, compared to 71% among those who were both heterosexual and cisgender.

Researchers combined data from many Household Pulse Surveys to get a larger sample size to study.

Married people are more likely than single people to be homeowners. But among the married population, LGBTQ+ people were less likely to own homes and had lower household incomes, according to the analysis.

“They see fewer benefits from that marriage financially than straight couples,” said Katie Visalli, coauthor of the report and research assistant at the Urban Institute’s Housing Finance Policy Center.

She added that the research can’t explain why, since she and her colleagues found that home ownership gaps weren’t attributable to age or gender pay disparities.

There’s not enough data-driven evidence to show whether discrimination is happening on a large institutional scale and whether disparities they found in home ownership apply to the wider LGBTQ+ population, Visalli said.

She cited the need to gather information about the country’s LGBTQ+ population in the Census Bureau’s more comprehensive American Community Survey and through Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data, which researchers use to show housing bias against people of color.

“We need to know more,” she said, “because there is something here.”

Todd Hill, coauthor of the report and senior policy program manager at the Housing Finance Policy Center, said, “I think this research we’re doing with the Urban Institute is only the beginning.”

In Redfin’s survey, one in five LGBTQ+ buyers and renters who recently moved said they think they were discriminated against because of their sexual orientation as they searched for a home.

Almost 40% of LGBTQ+ people who answered the survey said they would live only in a place with laws to protect residents based on gender and sexual orientation.

And about one in 10 LGBTQ+ people surveyed moved in the last year because of discrimination they experienced in their former neighborhood. Similar shares of Black and Hispanic survey respondents did the same.

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“Discrimination is definitely rampant,” said Foy, of Keller Williams Philadelphia. “And it’s something we all need to do more to fix and make sure there’s no place for it when people are investing in their futures and building wealth for the generations to come.”

Certain favorable loan programs meant to help low- and moderate-income buyers focus on homes in certain neighborhoods. If people from marginalized backgrounds have had traumatizing experiences in those neighborhoods, Foy said, that’s another barrier — one not faced by people who haven’t been marginalized.

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Foy said that fellow agents and other real estate industry professionals “should really pay attention to what’s happening in 2023″ and educate themselves about their inherent biases and how to correct them.

LaGreca, of Keller Williams Philly, said that among LGBTQ+ real estate agents and clients, there can be “internalized homophobia that you carry with you. Is this person gonna show up and be OK with how I’m presenting myself?”

“You have to get rid of your insecurity and be who you are,” she said. “And know that if people don’t want to work with you, that may be why.”

Anyone who thinks they’ve been discriminated against can file complaints with organizations such as regional Realtor associations, the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations, the Pennsylvania Human Relations Commission, and the New Jersey Division on Civil Rights.