FFIEC Releases 2017 Mortgage Lending Data

May 8, 2018

The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) released data on mortgage lending transactions at 5,852 U.S. financial institutions covered by the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA). Covered institutions include banks, savings associations, credit unions and mortgage companies. The loan-level HMDA data covers 2017 lending activity submitted by financial institutions on or before April 18, 2018.

The data includes:

  • Applications, originations, purchases of loans, sales of loans, denials and other actions related to applications
  • Loan amounts
  • Loan types (conventional, Federal Housing Administration (FHA), Veterans Administration (VA), Rural Housing Service (RHS) or Farm Service Agency (FSA))
  • Purposes (home purchase, home improvement, or refinancing)
  • Property types (1–4 family, multifamily, or manufactured housing)
  • Owner occupancy
  • Preapprovals (home purchase loans only)
  • Property locations (metropolitan statistical area (MSA), state, county, and census tract)
  • Applicant and co-applicant characteristics (race, ethnicity, sex, and income)
  • Pricing-related data
  • Type of purchasers
  • Whether a particular loan is subject to the Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act (HOEPA)
  • Whether a particular loan is secured by a first or a subordinate lien, or is unsecured

Observations from the data:

  • For 2017, the number of reporting institutions declined by about 13 percent from the previous year to 5,852. Contributing to the decline were Regulation C changes requiring HMDA collection and reporting from depository institutions only if, in each of the two preceding calendar years, they originated at least 25 home purchase loans, including refinancings of home purchase loans, that are not excluded under 12 CFR § 1003.4(d).1
  • The 2017 data include information on 12.1 million home loan applications, of which 7.3 million resulted in loan originations and 2.1 million in purchased loans, for a total of more than 14.1 million actions. The data also include information on approximately 481,000 requests for preapprovals for home purchase loans.
  • The total number of originated loans of all types and purposes decreased by more than 1 million between 2016 and 2017, or 12.4 percent. Refinance originations decreased by more than 33 percent, and home purchase lending increased by more than 4 percent.
  • From 2016 to 2017, the share of first-lien home purchase loans for 1–4 family, site-built, owner-occupied properties made to low- and moderate-income borrowers (those with income of less than 80 percent of area median income) rose slightly from 26.2 percent to 26.3 percent, and the share of refinance loans to low- and moderate-income borrowers increased from 16.9 percent to 22.9 percent.
  • In terms of borrower race and ethnicity, the share of home purchase loans for 1–4 family properties made to black borrowers rose from 6 percent in 2016 to 6.4 percent in 2017, the share made to Hispanic-white borrowers remained unchanged at 8.8 percent, and those made to Asian borrowers rose from 5.5 percent to 5.8 percent. From 2016 to 2017, the share of refinance loans made to black borrowers increased from 5 percent to 6 percent, the share made to Hispanic-white borrowers increased from 6.2 percent to 6.8 percent, and those made to Asian borrowers fell from 5.5 percent to 4 percent.
  • In 2017, black and Hispanic-white applicants experienced higher denial rates for conventional home purchase loans than non-Hispanic white applicants. The denial rate for Asian applicants is more comparable to the denial rate for non-Hispanic white applicants. These relationships are similar to those found in earlier years and, due to the limitations of the HMDA data discussed above, cannot take into account potential differences in risk characteristics across demographic groups.
  • The FHA-insured share of first-lien home purchase loans for 1–4 family, site-built owner-occupied properties declined from 25 percent in 2016 to 22.6 percent in 2017. The VA-guaranteed share of such loans remained at approximately 10 percent in 2017. The overall government-backed share of such purchase loans, including FHA, VA, RHS and FSA loans, was 36.3 percent in 2017, down slightly from 38.7 percent in 2016.
  • The FHA-insured share of first-lien refinance mortgages for 1–4 family, site-built owner-occupied properties increased to 13.2 percent in 2017 from 12 percent in 2016, while the VA-guaranteed share of such refinance loans decreased from 12.2 percent in 2016 to 11.4 percent in 2017.
  • The share of mortgages originated by non-depository, independent mortgage companies has increased sharply in recent years. In 2017, this group of lenders accounted for 56.1 percent of first-lien owner-occupied home-purchase loans, up from 53.3 percent in 2016. Independent mortgage companies also originated 55.8 percent of first-lien owner-occupied refinance loans, an increase from 52.2 percent in 2016, which was the first year in which independent mortgage companies made the majority of such loans since at least 1995.


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