The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) has announced the availability of data on mortgage lending transactions at 7,923 U.S. financial institutions covered by the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA). Covered institutions include banks, savings associations, credit unions, and mortgage companies. The HMDA data made available covers 2010 lending activity—applications, originations, purchases of loans, denials, and other actions such as incomplete or withdrawn applications.
The FFIEC 2010 Annual Report includes disclosure statements for each financial institution, aggregate data for each metropolitan statistical area (MSA), nationwide summary statistics regarding lending patterns, and Loan/Application Registers (LARs) for each financial institution (LARs modified to help ensure borrower privacy). The FFIEC prepares and distributes this information on behalf of its member agencies—the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), National Credit Union Administration (NCUA), Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) and the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development (HUD).
The 2010 data include information on 12.9 million home loan applications (of which nearly eight million resulted in loan originations) and 3.2 million loan purchases, for a total of about 16.2 million actions. The data also include information on 165,000 requests for preapprovals that did not result in a loan origination. The number of reporting institutions fell two percent from 2009, attributable to a relatively large decline (about seven percent from 2009) in the number of mortgage companies reporting data. The total number of originated loans of all types and purposes reported decreased by about 1.1 million, or 12 percent, from 2009, in part because of a 14 percent decline in the number of refinancings.
The HMDA data show the disposition of loan applications and include information on loan type (such as conventional or Federal Housing Administration [FHA]), purpose (home purchase, home improvement, or refinancing), and amount; property type (one- to four-family, multifamily, or manufactured housing); property location (MSA, state, county, and census tract); applicant characteristics (race, ethnicity, sex, and income); and census tract characteristics (minority composition and income). The data also show whether a loan is subject to the Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act (HOEPA) and if a loan is secured by a first or subordinate lien, or is unsecured. In addition, the data provide information on higher-priced lending.
The rules used to determine whether a loan is classified as higher-priced under HMDA were changed in 2008. The new rules took effect for applications taken beginning Oct. 1, 2009. For applications taken prior to that date, lenders reported the spread between a loan's annual percentage rate (APR) and the yield on comparable-maturity Treasury securities if it exceeded specified thresholds. For applications taken on or after that date, lenders also reported spreads for loans that exceeded specified thresholds, but the spread was measured as the difference between the APR on the loan and the estimated APR (termed the "average prime offer rate" or APOR) for loans extended to prime borrowers based on the rates reported by Freddie Mac in its Primary Mortgage Market Survey (PMMS). The specified thresholds under the revised price reporting rule are 1.5 percentage points above the PMMS rate for first lien loans and 3.5 percentage points for junior lien loans. The 2010 data reflect the first full year of data reported under the revised loan pricing rules.
With respect to loan pricing, the 2010 data on the incidence of higher-priced lending show a small minority of loans (3.2 percent) have APRs that exceeded the loan price reporting thresholds. For example, for conventional first lien loans used to purchase site-built properties, about 3.3 percent exceeded the reporting threshold. For similar government-backed loans, about 1.3 percent exceeded the loan price reporting threshold. The principal exception to the low incidence of higher-priced lending is that 80 percent of first lien loans used to purchase manufactured homes exceeded the reporting threshold in 2010. The incidence of higher-priced lending reported in the 2010 HMDA data varies some across racial and ethnic groups, although the absolute levels of such higher-priced lending are notably lower for all groups than during the period preceding the implementation of the new classification rule.
The HMDA data reflect a continued heavy reliance on loans backed by FHA insurance that began with the emergence of the recent mortgage market difficulties. For home purchase lending, the FHA's share of first-lien loans increased from seven percent in 2007 to 37 percent in 2009 and 36 percent in 2010. First-lien lending for home purchases backed by Veterans Administration (VA) guarantees also has increased markedly, although VA-backed lending is much smaller in scope than FHA-backed lending. The VA market share of first-lien home purchase loans increased from 2.7 percent in 2007 to 6.7 percent in 2009 and seven percent in 2010.
Regarding the disposition of applications for conventional home-purchase loans in 2010, blacks and Hispanic whites had notably higher gross denial rates than non-Hispanic whites. The pattern for Asians was somewhat different, as their gross denial rate was slightly lower than the corresponding gross denial rates for non-Hispanic whites. These relationships are similar to those found in earlier years.
