Nation: Why Women Pay More For Mortgages

Women are 32 percent more likely to carry mortgages with high interest rates than men with similar incomes, even though women generally have better credit scores, according to a study released recently by the Consumer Federation of America.

The study also found that wealthier women were 50 percent more likely to carry expensive loans than their male counterparts. In 2005, 10 percent of women who took out mortgages received the highest-cost sub-prime loans, compared with about 7.5 percent of men.

Why do women pay more? Allen Fishbein, the federation’s director of housing and credit policy, speculates that the most likely reason for the disparity was that women were less familiar with the mortgage market than men and didn’t shop around.

''There is some research indicating that women are, on the whole, less likely than men to bargain for major consumer purchases and credit transactions,'' he says.