WASHINGTON—The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council has announced the availability of data on mortgage lending transactions at 6,913 U.S. financial institutions covered by the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA).
Among the key findings in the data is that the total number of originated loans of all types and purposes increased by 1.4 million between 2014 and 2015, or 22%.
The HMDA data made available covers 2015 lending activity and include:
- applications, originations, purchases and sales of loans, denials, and other actions related to applications
- loan amount
- loan type (conventional, Federal Housing Administration (FHA), Veterans Administration (VA), Rural Housing Service (RHS) or Farm Service Agency (FSA))
- purpose (home purchase, home improvement, or refinancing)
- property type (1-4 family, multifamily, or manufactured housing)
- owner occupancy
- preapproval (home purchase loans only)
- property location (metropolitan statistical area (MSA), state, county, and census tract)
- applicant and co-applicant characteristics (race, ethnicity, sex and income)
- pricing-related data
- type of purchaser
- whether a loan is subject to the Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act (HOEPA)
- whether a loan is secured by a first or subordinate lien, or is unsecured
The data released also includes disclosure statements for each financial institution, aggregate data for each MSA, nationwide summary statistics regarding lending patterns, and Loan/Application Registers (LARs) for each financial institution (LARs are modified to protect borrower privacy).
Key Observations From The Data
For 2015, the number of reporting institutions declined about 2.5% from the previous year to 6,913. While there were some new reporters in 2015, this number was more than offset by the number of institutions that reported in 2014 but did not do so in 2015. In most cases, this is because of mergers and acquisitions, the FFIEC said.
The 2015 data include information on 12.1 million home loan applications, of which 7.4 million resulted in loan originations, and 2.1 million in purchased loans, for a total of 14.2 million actions. The data also include information on approximately 531,000 requests for preapprovals for home purchase loans.
The total number of originated loans of all types and purposes increased by 1.4 million between 2014 and 2015, or 22%. Refinance originations increased by 36%, and home purchase lending increased by 13%, according to the FFIEC.
From 2014 to 2015, the share of 1–4 family home purchase loans made to low- and moderate-income borrowers (those with income of less than 80% of area median income) rose slightly from approximately 26% in 2014 to roughly 27% in 2015, while the share of refinance loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers decreased from 24% to 22%.
In terms of borrower race and ethnicity, the share of home purchase loans for 1–4 family properties made to black borrowers rose from 4.9% to nearly 5.2%, the share made to Hispanic-white borrowers rose from 7.5% to 7.9%, and those made to Asian borrowers declined slightly from 5.7% to 5.5%. The share of refinance loans made to black borrowers decreased from 5.2% to 4.9%, the share made to Hispanic-white borrowers rose slightly from 6.0% to 6.1%, and those made to Asian borrowers rose from 4.5% to 5.1%.
The FFIEC said the data show that during 2015 black and Hispanic-white applicants experienced higher denial rates for conventional home purchase loans than non-Hispanic white applicants. The denial rate for Asian applicants is more comparable to the denial rate for non-Hispanic white applicants. These relationships are similar to those found in earlier years and do not take into account potential differences in risk characteristics across demographic groups, the FFIEC said.
In 2015, the FHA-insured share of first-lien home purchase loans for 1–4 family, site-built owner-occupied properties increased to 25% from 21% in 2014, reversing a downward trend in the FHA’s market share since 2009. The VA-guaranteed share of such loans remained at approximately 10% in 2015. The overall government-backed share of such purchase loans, including FHA, VA, RHS and FSA loans, was 39% in 2015, increasing from 37% in 2014, but down from 54% in 2009. One reason for the rise in the FHA’s market share may have been that the FHA significantly reduced its annual mortgage insurance premiums by 0.5%age points in January 2015 for loans with terms greater than 15 years, the FFIEC said.
The FHA-insured share of first-lien refinance mortgages for 1–4 family, site-built owner-occupied properties also increased in 2015, to about 14% from 9% in 2014, while the VA-guaranteed share of such refinance loans decreased by approximately one percentage point to 9%.
The 2015 HMDA data also include information on loan pricing for loans classified as “higher-priced.” Higher-priced loans are defined as loans with annual percentage rates that exceed the average prime offer rates (APORs) by at least 1.5%age points for first-lien loans and at least 3.5%age points for subordinate lien loans. The data on the incidence of higher-priced lending shows that nearly 6% of first-lien loans originated in 2015 have APRs that exceed the loan price reporting thresholds, down from nearly 8% in 2014.
About 22% of the FHA’s first-lien home purchase loans had APRs above the reporting threshold for higher-priced loans, significantly down from 45% in 2014.
FFIEC members are the NCUA, FDIC OCC, Federal Reserve and the CFPB.