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 trillion are contained in the reports.
One thing that jumps out at me is there is a slight disconnect on the percentage of loan originations when measured by number and dollar. The two are on opposite sides of the 50 percent divide: 46% of the 5.9 million mortgage apps were approved, but 52 percent of the $1.4 trillion in mortgage dollars asked for was approved.
Loans approved come to 2.8 million, for $743 billion in origination dollars.
The data come from an early look at the 2015 HMDA statistics in the LendingPatterns tool of ComplianceTech, which has obtained data from many lenders in advance of the government’s fall release of all lenders.
Another small disconnect is between loans approved and dollars approved in the racial categories. So whites received 67 percent of the approvals by number (1.8 million), while getting only 61 percent of the loan dollars approved ($450 billion).
That doesn’t mean minorities received the other 40 percent of dollars granted. In fully 20 percent of the volume, recipient race was unknown or not available. Still, the 20 percent of loan dollars (19.7 percent) that went to minorities is a couple of hundred basis points higher than the typical percentage over the many years I have been studying HMDA numbers. For full year 2014, for instance, that percentage was 18.5 percent.
Conventional lending accounted for 80 percent of 2015 early look dollars. Of the guvvies, the Federal Housing Administration came in at 12 percent and the Department of Veterans Affairs at 7.6 percent.
An unusual dead heat manifested itself in the purchase/refi split. Generally one type dominates until markets turn and then the other dominates. But both purchases and refis made up 48 percent of 2015 early look dollars granted (slightest of edge to refis at 48.8 percent). This unusual split could of course be different once the full year 2015 HMDA numbers come out.
Low- and moderate-income borrowers received a total of 11.7 percent of the early look dollars, with the upper income bracket getting almost 60 percent. LMI borrowers matched 2014’s total of 12 percent fairly closely.
More than a third of the early look production (nearly 36 percent) was not sold to investors but remained in portfolio. The top investor was Fannie Mae at 22 percent, followed by non-agency buyers at 15 percent, Freddie Mac at 14 percent, and Ginnie Mae at 13 percent.
A high percentage (38 percent) of the dollars granted by early look responders was in jumbo mortgages. Conforming mortgages had 62 percent of early look dollar volume. For comparison, in full year 2014 jumbo loans made up just 32 percent of dollars granted.
(Mark Fogarty is a journalist and analyst who has been covering the mortgage industry for more than 30 years.)
Recent Comments