Single women own more homes than their male counterparts, yet they are almost 30% more likely to be denied a mortgage, the latest research from LendingTree reveals.
The study also found that single women were less likely to be potential borrowers. Sole female mortgage applicants made up 21.9% of potential homebuyers in 2024, while sole men accounted for 32.8%.
In other words, the study says, there were 1.5 single male applicants for every sole female applicant. “Income unquestionably plays a major role in these disparities,” said Matt Schulz, LendingTree’s chief consumer finance analyst. “It’s hard to overstate how important income is to the buying process.”
Income doesn’t factor into credit scores, Schulz pointed out, but it does “massively” impact a buyer’s ability to save for a downpayment, her debt-to-income ratio, and her comfort level with a long-term commitment like a 30-year mortgage and owning a house. “Those things matter a lot,” the analyst said.
Sexism and gender-based discrimination also play a role, he said, and “haven’t disappeared in 2025.” But if the applicant isn’t making enough money, he added, it becomes a challenge to make the DTI ratio look good in the eyes of a lender.
Perhaps that’s why LendingTree’s review of last year’s HMDA data found that single women originate conventional 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages for smaller amounts — an average of $299,134 vs. $356,550 for single men — resulting in lower monthly payments but with slightly better than average interest rates.
Sole male buyers, on the other hand, pay more monthly than sole women in every state, the research discovered. Single men also originate conventional 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages with higher average loan amounts in every state.
Overall, single female applicants face higher denial rates at 15.7%, compared with 12.1% for single male applicants. That’s a difference of 29.8%. Sole male buyers, however, pay more monthly than their female counterparts in every state. And they dominate across all loan types, the study found.
Among just sole applicants, men took out “a significant” 81.6% of GI loans. Sole women hold a higher percentage of sole-originated FHA loans at 44%, but sole men still account for the majority at 56%.
Looking across all primary home purchases in 2024, sole women originated $173.3 billion in mortgage debt, while sole men originated $328.7 billion. By the numbers, sole women originated 600,817 loans while men originated 949,477.
Among single borrowers, moreover, men dominated in nearly all age groups. Among those under 25, men made up 71.2% of all loan originations. The gap narrows with age from there, with women finally outpacing men in the 65-to-74 and over-74 age groups
The District of Columbia is the only jurisdiction where the percentage of sole female applicants is higher than that among sole males (32% versus 29.2%). Utah has the largest gap at 125.4%, with over twice as many single men applying as sole women (30.2% versus 13.4%).
Single women were more likely to be turned down for a mortgage in Louisiana (29.0% versus 18.1%), Mississippi (29.0% versus 19.8%), and Alabama (21.9% versus 14.8%). Men were more likely to be rejected in just six states — Alaska, Hawaii, Vermont, Maine, Rhode Island, and D.C.
