Category: blog

  • 2015 HMDA Originations: A Big Jump to $1.85 Trillion

    The 2015 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act numbers are now available in LendingPatterns™ and they show a healthy originations volume of $1.85 trillion for the year through 7.4 million loans. That’s up sharply from 2014’s $1.4 trillion in originations through six million mortgages. The purchase mortgage/refinancing split, which was an unusual dead even at 48 percent…

  • Fed Gives Outline of 2015 HMDA Data

    LendingPatterns™ will very shortly have the 2015 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data in place. But for now, the Federal Reserve has released a broad-brush analysis of the database. The article, by Neil Bhutta and Daniel R. Ringo of the Fed’s Division of Research and Statistics, reveals that 2015 HMDA statistics show a big jump in…

  • Los Angeles, New York MSAs Had Most Mortgages in 2014

    An interesting way to look at the topic of expensive housing markets is to look for data in LendingPatterns™ on the areas with the most lending. If the largest MSAs by population aren’t matching the top MSAs by numbers of loans, this might be an indication they are getting too pricey for some to afford.…

  • HMDA Race, Ethnicity Categories Not Set in Stone

    Race and ethnicity data are one of the hallmarks of HMDA reporting. But the categories are by no means set in stone. The last major changes came for the 2000 Census, with all government agencies having to implement them by 2003. It is interesting both to wonder when the next revisions might come and to…

  • Early Responders Report $750 Billion in 2015 Mortgages

    There’s just time for another quick peak at the “early look” HMDA responders in advance of the official 2015 release. It will be interesting to see how this sample compares to the full universe of HMDA responders! The early look isn’t comprehensive, but it is quite sizable: applications for nearly six million mortgages for $1.4…

  • LP Good for Looking at Small Niches As Well As Large Ones

    In my last blog I looked for a trend for 2015 early HMDA responders for one of the biggest cohorts in the mortgage industry—FHA lenders. But LendingPatterns™ also yields lots of data for much smaller niches. For instance I’ve been following mortgage lending to Native Americans for years, as part of my Community Reinvestment Act…

  • Patterns in FHA Lending: Banks Lessening Share?

    Recent news reports say that commercial banks are lessening their share of Federal Housing Administration loans. What can LendingPatterns™ tell us about this potential trend? Taking a look at the Early Look for 2015 data, six of the top 20 FHA lenders are banks, although several more are mortgage banks affiliated with banks. By comparison,…

  • Getting a Sneak Peek at the 2015 HMDA Numbers

    It is now possible to get a four month jump on seeing what is in the 2015 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data. That’s because 175 lenders who generated more than 40 percent of last year’s application numbers, have reported their numbers early, with the results now collected in LendingPatterns™. It can be accessed at “Early…

  • More Than 6,000 Lenders Made Mortgages to Women in 2014

    I went looking in LendingPatterns™ to see how many women-owned banks and thrifts there were in 2014 and came up with—none. But there are more than 6,000 lenders that made loans to women in that year. Women (either alone, as primary applicant, or two women together) applied for more than half a trillion dollars’ worth…

  • FDIC Category Took in One Million Apps, Made $141 Billion in Loans

    HMDA’s “FDIC lenders” category is huge, with more than 2,500 mortgage lenders that took more than one million home loan applications in 2014 and ended up originating 700,000 of them, a look through LendingPatterns™ shows. While big, the FDIC category doesn’t actually include all FDIC-insured lenders. Any mortgage lender with more than $10 billion in…