The 2007 HMDA Data

Abstract

The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1975 (HMDA) requires most mortgage lending institutions with offices in metropolitan areas to publicly disclose information about their home-lending activity. The information includes characteristics of the home mortgages that lenders originate or purchase during a calendar year, the geographic location of the properties related to these loans, and demographic and other information about the borrowers.1 The disclosures are intended not only to help the public determine whether institutions are adequately serving their communities’ housing finance needs but also to facilitate enforcement of the nation’s fair lending laws and to inform investment in both the public and private sectors. Under the 1975 act, the Federal Reserve Board implements the provisions of HMDA through regulation.2 In addition, the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) is responsible for collecting the HMDA data and facilitating public access to the information.3 Each September, the FFIEC releases summary tables pertaining to lending activity from the previous calendar year for each reporting lender and an aggregation of home-lending activity by metropolitan statistical area (MSA).4 The FFIEC also makes available a consolidated data file containing virtually all the reported information for each lending institution.5 The HMDA data consist of information reported by about 8,600 home lenders, including all of the nation’s largest mortgage originators. The loans reported are estimated to represent about 80 percent of all home lending nationwide; thus, they likely provide a broadly representative picture of home lending in the United States. This article presents key findings from the 2007 HMDA data. In doing so, it highlights the notable changes in relationships that are revealed when the 2007 data are compared with data from earlier years.6 Because of the importance of the loan-pricing information included in the HMDA data and because of the recent turmoil in the residential mortgage market, particularly the higher-priced segment of the market, much of the focus here is on the data pertaining to that market segment.7