How the numbers are built
Everything on this site is computed from public files with published code. This page lists every filter, definition and threshold.
Source records
The HMDA 2025 public loan/application register (LAR) — the Snapshot National Loan-Level Dataset as of June 1, 2026, released by the FFIEC and CFPB on June 23, 2026. We downloaded one file per state (50 states and DC) from the official FFIEC Data Browser API, keeping applications that were originated, approved but not accepted, or denied (action taken 1–3) for home purchase, refinancing or cash-out refinancing (purposes 1, 31, 32): 7,155,718 records. Withdrawn and incomplete applications and purchased loans are excluded.
The comparable segment
Headline statistics use 4,834,012 records for principal residences, single-family (1–4 unit) site-built homes, first liens, and closed-end consumer loans (not reverse mortgages, open-end lines or business-purpose loans). Smaller institutions with a partial exemption under the 2018 Economic Growth Act may report these flags and some pricing fields as "exempt"; their first-lien purchase and refinance records (110,751 of them) are kept, so they count in volumes, incomes and denials, while their exempt fields drop out of rate and cost medians.
"What the homes were for" also counts second homes and investment properties, and manufactured homes are reported separately.
Measures
- Denial rate = denied ÷ (originated + approved not accepted + denied).
- Loan types: conventional, FHA, VA and USDA (RHS/FSA) as reported.
- 30-year fixed rate: originated loans with a 360-month term, no introductory (adjustable) rate period and no interest-only, balloon or negative-amortization features. 15-year fixed uses a 180-month term.
- Rate spread: APR minus the average prime offer rate for a comparable transaction on the rate-lock date, as reported by the lender.
- Total loan costs: section D of the Closing Disclosure. Origination charges: section A (includes discount points). Discount points and lender credits: dollars; for loans that report loan costs, a blank field is treated as none.
- Down payment: 100% minus the median combined loan-to-value ratio. "20% or more down" = CLTV of 80% or less.
- Income: gross annual income relied on in the credit decision, reported in thousands of dollars; zero or negative values are excluded.
- Debt-to-income, age and co-applicant use the public bands; "single borrower" = no co-applicant.
- Jumbo share uses the lender-reported conforming-loan-limit flag.
Medians and publication thresholds
Medians and quartiles use the nearest-rank definition on exact histograms (rates to 0.001 point, dollar costs to $10, loan and property values at the public $10,000-band midpoints, income to $1,000, CLTV to 0.1 point). A county, metro or state median is shown only when at least 30 loans report the field; lender-level medians need at least 20. Rankings include counties with at least 100 purchase loans.
Geography
Counties are the 3,144 counties and county-equivalents of the 50 states and DC in the Census Bureau's 2024 Gazetteer, including Connecticut's nine planning regions. Metro areas are HMDA's derived metropolitan statistical area or division codes, named from the OMB July 2023 delineations; areas outside metros are not grouped. Nearby counties are the six closest by distance between Census internal points.
Lenders
Lenders are identified by Legal Entity Identifier (LEI); names come from the official 2025 HMDA filer list, with capitalization normalized. For a few lenders whose consumer brand differs from the legal name, the brand is shown with the official sources that document the relationship. A lender gets a profile when it reported at least 100 applications in the comparable segment, and a state page with at least 200 originations in that state. County tables list the 25 lenders with the most originations. Lender pricing comparisons use conventional loans only, because FHA and VA loan costs include upfront insurance premiums or funding fees.
Loan limits and property taxes
2026 conforming limits come from FHFA's full county list and were cross-checked against HUD's GSE limit file (they agree for every county). FHA forward-mortgage limits for 2026 and 2025 come from HUD's published data files. The 2025 files use Connecticut's former counties, so Connecticut has no year-over-year comparison. Typical property-tax rates are median real-estate taxes divided by median home value from the Census Bureau's ACS 2020–2024 5-year estimates.
Loan Estimate checker
For each state we store the nine deciles of total loan costs, origination charges, discount points and rate for originated loans, grouped by purpose (purchase or rate/term refinance), loan type (conventional, FHA, VA) and loan amount band (under $150K, $150–250K, $250–400K, $400–600K, $600–800K, $800K+); groups with fewer than 30 loans fall back to the national group. County groups (all types and sizes) are used for origination charges. Your figure's percentile is interpolated between deciles.
Limitations
- HMDA has no credit scores: lender and place differences partly reflect borrowers.
- Rates are those locked during 2025; today's market differs. Rate spread corrects for timing only approximately.
- HMDA data alone cannot determine whether any lender complies with fair-lending laws, and nothing here is a rating of service.
- Public records are privacy-modified (rounded amounts and values, banded ages and some DTI values).
- Some lenders correct their filings after publication; we use the snapshot as released.
Reproducibility
The aggregation script reads the 51 state files (SHA-256 of each listed on sources) and writes a compressed aggregates file (SHA-256 9b88dc94b0fcde56…); a deterministic import turns it and the official limit files into this site. No figure is entered by hand.