HMDAHMDA
The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA), enacted in 1975 and implemented by Regulation C, requires most mortgage lenders to report data on every home loan application they receive. The resulting public dataset shows each lender’s applications, originations and denials by loan type, geography and borrower characteristics.
Who must report
Coverage depends on an institution’s size, location and volume. Depository institutions above an annual asset threshold with a branch in a metropolitan area generally report if they originated at least 25 closed-end mortgages in each of the two preceding calendar years, or at least 200 open-end lines of credit such as HELOCs. Many small rural banks and credit unions fall below the thresholds and do not report.
What the data shows
Each reported application records the loan type and purpose, amount, property location, action taken (originated, denied, withdrawn and so on), and, for most lenders, pricing and borrower demographics. Lenders submit a Loan/Application Register each year, and the CFPB and FFIEC publish the combined data, with some fields modified to protect borrower privacy.
For anyone studying a bank, HMDA is the best public measure of real mortgage activity: how many loans it actually closed, in which counties, and how often applications ended in denial or withdrawal.
How RAVEN uses it
Every RAVEN audit sizes a bank’s mortgage volume from its HMDA filings rather than estimates. Combined with the call report, it gives a grounded picture of how much verification work a lending team actually does.
Common questions
What does HMDA stand for?
The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, a 1975 federal law implemented by the CFPB’s Regulation C.
Which lenders have to report HMDA data?
Most mortgage lenders above the coverage thresholds: generally those with a metropolitan-area branch that originated at least 25 closed-end mortgages in each of the two prior years, or at least 200 open-end lines of credit, plus asset-size tests for banks and credit unions.
Is HMDA data public?
Yes. The CFPB and FFIEC publish it annually, with some fields modified or removed to protect borrower privacy.