Florida is a state with a considerable Hispanic population and a reputation as a valued source for investor real estate interest. Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data from LendingPatterns™ tend to back both of those characteristics.

Nearly $14 billion of nearly $100 billion in 2015 mortgage volume in the Sunshine State went to Hispanics, 14 percent of the total, the data show. That’s twice the nationwide mortgage dollar percentage for Hispanics for 2015. Other minority groups were nowhere near the Hispanic percentage in Florida. Blacks received 4.7 percent of mortgage dollars, while Asians got just 2.3 percent. Whites led the state with 60 percent of volume.

Caliber Home Loans was the leading mortgage lender to Hispanics in 2015, but not by much. The Irving, TX-based lender had a volume of $677 million, just about five percent, to Florida Hispanics in 2015, edging out Wells Fargo, at $635 million. Paramount Residential Mortgage, Corona, CA, was third at $529 million.

Wells Fargo did lead the state in non-owner occupied mortgages, at $1.2 billion, which was almost 7.5 percent of the market and well ahead of Bank of America, at $700 million, and Berkeley Point Capital, Bethesda, MD, at $532 million.

In all, 16 percent, or $16 billion in home loan finance went to non-owner occupied mortgages in Florida in 2015.

Just over a quarter of total Florida mortgage volume in 2015 was in government mortgages, with just a touch under three quarters in conventional loans. The biggest government agency in volume was the Federal Housing Administration, at 15 percent, followed by the Department of Veterans Affairs at 11 percent.

Nearly two-thirds of the state volume went for purchasing homes, with a third going to refinancings and just over two percent to home improvement loans.

A little less than ten percent of volume went to borrowers with low or moderate incomes. Fourteen percent went to middle-income borrowers and the largest part, 61 percent, went to upper-income borrowers.

As far as the gender rollup went, about 15 percent went to apps with women with no male on the app versus 70 percent of apps that had at least one male borrower.

In the secondary market, about 31 percent of loans stayed on the books and another 22 percent went to non-agency investors. The agencies trailed behind, with Fannie Mae showing the highest volume, at 19 percent.

The conforming/jumbo share split came to 25 percent for jumbo mortgages and 75 percent for conforming ones.

Average lien sizes were $237,000 for a first lien and $61,000 for a subordinate one. But more than 99 percent of all Florida volume in 2015 was for first liens.

Single-family dominated the property types at more than 90 percent, but there was also a pretty healthy eight percent of volume done for multifamily properties.

(Mark Fogarty is a journalist and analyst who has been covering the mortgage industry for more than 30 years.)