WASHINGTON—Data on mortgage lending transactions from more than 5,500 U.S. financial institutions – required by the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) – is now available from the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC), of which NCUA is a member.
In 2019, although the number of reporting institutions declined about 3% from the previous year, the data still includes information on 15.1 million home loan applications. The FFIEC said that 12.5 million applications were closed-end – an increase of 21% from the previous year – while 2.1 million were open-end – a 9% decrease. There were 442,000 applications that did not disclose whether it was open-end or close-end, NAFCU said.
Of note, refinance originations for one- to four-family properties increased 78% from 2018, and home purchase lending increased 4%.
The data also details home purchase loans made to low- or moderate-income borrowers and among different races and ethnicities.
Products Available
There are several data products available to sort through the data, including:
- The HMDA Dynamic National Loan-Level Dataset, which is updated, on a weekly basis, to reflect late submissions and resubmissions
- The Aggregate and Disclosure Reports to provide summary information on individual financial institutions and geographies
- The HMDA Data Browser, which allows users to create custom tables and download datasets that can be further analyzed
- The Loan/Application Registers for each HMDA filer of 2019 data (released in late March), modified to protect borrower privacy
In April, the CFPB issued its final rule to increase the reporting threshold for closed-end dwelling secured loans from 25 loans in the preceding two calendar years to 100 loans. This change takes effect July 1.
In addition, the rule increases the threshold for reporting open-end lines of credit, including home equity lines of credit (HELOCs), from the original threshold of 100 loans in the 2015 rule to 200 loans effective Jan. 1, 2022. Until the new threshold takes effect, the temporary threshold of 500 open-end lines of credit, which was extended until 2022 in October, will remain in place, NAFCU noted.
Data Points
Observations from the 2019 Data
According to the FFIEC, some of the observations from the 2019 data include:
- For 2019, the number of reporting institutions declined by about 3% from the previous year to 5,508. The 2019 data include information on 15.1 million home loan applications. Among them, 12.5 million were closed-end, 2.1 million were open-end, and, for another 442,000 records, pursuant to the EGRRCPA’s partial exemptions, financial institutions did not indicate whether the records were closed-end or open-end.
- The number of closed-end loan applications increased by 21%, and the number of open-end line of credit applications decreased by 9%. A total of 9.3 million applications resulted in loan originations. Among them, 7.9 million were closed-end mortgage originations, 1.1 million were open-end line of credit originations, and, pursuant to the EGRRCPA’s partial exemptions, 335,000 were originations for which financial institutions did not indicate whether they were closed-end or open-end. The 2019 data include 2.3 million purchased loans, for a total of 17.5 million records. The data also include information on approximately 151,000 preapproval requests that were denied or approved but not accepted.
- The total number of originated closed-end loans increased by about two-million between 2018 and 2019, or 26%. Refinance originations for 1-4 family properties increased by 78% from 1.9 million, and home purchase lending increased by 4% from 4.3 million.
- From 2018 to 2019, the share of home purchase loans for first lien, 1-4 family, site-built, owner-occupied properties made to low- or moderate-income borrowers (those with income of less than 80% of area median income) increased slightly from 28.1% to 28.6%, and the share of refinance loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers for first lien, 1-4 family, site-built, owner-occupied properties decreased from 30% to 23.8%.
- In terms of borrower race and ethnicity, the share of home purchase loans for first lien, 1-4 family, site-built, owner-occupied properties made to Black borrowers rose from 6.7% in 2018 to 7.0% in 2019, the share made to Hispanic-White borrowers increased slightly from 8.9% to 9.2%, and those made to Asian borrowers decreased from 5.9 % to 5.7%.