Almost every mortgage statistic you see broken down by state — denial rates, originations, FHA share — traces back to one source: HMDA, the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act dataset. Every figure on RateLedger is built from it.
It’s public and free. HMDA is a US Government public-domain work, published in the HMDA Data Browser. No login, no key.
What HMDA records
Passed in 1975, HMDA requires most mortgage lenders to report each application and loan. For every record you get fields like:
| Field | What it captures |
|---|---|
| Action taken | Originated, approved-not-accepted, denied, withdrawn, incomplete |
| Loan purpose | Home purchase, refinance, cash-out refinance, home improvement |
| Loan type | Conventional, FHA, VA, USDA/RHS |
| Property location | State, county, census tract |
| Applicant info | Income, demographics (no credit score) |
From these raw counts we derive transparent metrics — the denial rate, loan-type shares and ranks — documented on our methodology page.
The questions it answers well
- How many loans were made where? See originations by state.
- How often are applications denied? See the denial-rate rankings.
- What’s the loan-type mix? Conventional vs FHA vs VA, by state.
The questions it can’t answer
HMDA shows what happened, not always why. It omits credit scores and the full underwriting decision, so a high denial rate in a state isn’t proof of stricter lenders or discrimination on its own — it may simply reflect who applies. It’s also reported once a year with a lag, so the latest complete year (currently 2023) trails the present market.
Use it as a starting point
Treat HMDA as a transparency record and a map of the lending landscape — then verify anything important at the source. Start with your state’s lending profile.
Sources
HMDA Data Browser (FFIEC/CFPB, public domain). See our methodology.