The Solo Woman Homebuyer (2025)
Women buying homes on their own borrow less and are turned down more often than men buying alone.
Key findings
- In 2025, single women took out 22.3% of mortgages used to buy a home, single men 35.7%, and two-applicant (joint) borrowers 41.9%.
- That still adds up to 737,021 homes bought by a woman on her own, with no co-borrower.
- Women buying alone were turned down more often than men buying alone: 19.4% denied versus 15.0%, with joint applicants lowest at 11.2%.
- Single women also borrowed less, a median loan of $265,000 against $295,000 for single men and $355,000 for couples.
Buying a home without a partner is common, and the mortgage record shows how differently it goes depending on who the lone applicant is. HMDA classifies each application by who is on it: a single male applicant, a single female applicant, or a joint pair. This looks at every 2025 home-purchase application and compares the three groups on how many homes they bought, how often they were denied, and how large a loan they took on. Part of the gap in denials and loan size reflects differences in income and existing debt between the groups, which HMDA captures only in limited form, so these figures describe what happened, not why. HMDA is a near-census, so these are exact counts; applications with sex not reported are left out of the shares.
Buying alone, 2025
Single women versus single men
| Category | Share of home-purchase loans | Denial rate |
|---|---|---|
| Single women | 22.3% | 19.4% |
| Single men | 35.7% | 15% |
| Joint | 41.9% | 11.2% |
By applicant
| Applicant | Homes bought | Share | Denial rate | Median loan |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single woman | 737,021 | 22.3% | 19.4% | $265,000 |
| Single man | 1,179,746 | 35.7% | 15.0% | $295,000 |
| Joint | 1,384,096 | 41.9% | 11.2% | $355,000 |
A single applicant has no co-applicant on the loan. Median loan is for originated loans; HMDA rounds loan amounts to the nearest $10,000. Exact counts; no sampling margins of error.
Data Sources & Methodology
The figures on this page are computed directly from the source data below. Narrative text accompanies the figures but never generates them.
Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) Loan/Application Register (LAR)
- Vintage:
- 2025
- Access:
- BigQuery
- Cadence:
- annual
Loan-level records of U.S. mortgage applications and originations reported under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. Each row is one application or loan, with loan terms, action taken, property and census-tract geography, and privacy-protected applicant demographics. It is a near-census of covered mortgage activity, enabling analysis of lending, denials, and access to credit.
HMDA requires most U.S. mortgage lenders to report every mortgage application and loan they act on. The annual snapshot file is a frozen national extract of these loan/application records (the Loan/Application Register, or LAR) for the reporting year.
The LAR is administrative data covering the large majority of U.S. mortgage activity, not a probability sample. Statistics are exact counts and shares over the reported records; there are no sampling weights and no sampling margins of error.
To protect applicant privacy, the public file bins or rounds several fields (for example age, income, loan amount, and debt-to-income and loan-to-value ratios) and withholds some values. Analyses use these modified fields as published.
Each record carries state and county FIPS codes and a census tract, supporting state, county, and tract-level analysis; metropolitan areas can be derived from county.
- HMDA covers lenders above reporting thresholds, so it captures the large majority, but not literally all, of U.S. mortgage activity.
- Several applicant fields are binned, rounded, or withheld for privacy, which limits precise computation on income, age, loan amount, and ratio fields.
- The data reflects applications and lender actions, not loan performance; it says nothing about whether loans were later repaid.
- Reported race, ethnicity, and sex follow HMDA collection rules and include "not provided" and institution-reported categories that require careful handling.
How these figures were produced
- Estimate type:
- Administrative near-census (exact counts)
- Weighting:
- None (not a weighted sample)
Suggested citation
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, 2025 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) Loan/Application Register, via FFIEC. Analysis by Matt George, itsmattgeorge.com. Retrieved 2026-10-22.