The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC) recently announced the public availability of Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data for 2021.  The CFPB also released a summary of the data.  The data include information on 23.8 million home loan applications, with 21.1 million being identified as closed-end loan applications.  A total of 15 million applications resulted in loan originations. 

Among other items, the data reflect the following:

• The number of reporting institutions declined by about 3.1 percent from 4,475 in 2020 to    4,338 in 2021.

• The share of first lien, owner-occupied, site built home purchase loans originated by non-bank, independent mortgage companies increased from 60.7 percent in 2020 to 63.9 percent in 2021. 

• The share of first lien, owner-occupied, site built home purchase loans made to (1) Black or African American borrowers rose from 7.3 percent in 2020 to 7.9 percent in 2021, and (2) Hispanic-White borrowers rose from 9.1 percent in 2020 to 9.2 percent in 2021.                  
• The denial rates for first lien, owner-occupied, site built home purchase conventional loans were 15.7 percent for Black or African American applicants, 9.8 percent for Hispanic-White applicants, 7.5 percent for Asian applicants and 5.6 percent for non-Hispanic-White applicants.  In its press release the CFPB observed that “These relationships are similar to those found in earlier years and, due to the limitations of the HMDA data mentioned above, cannot take into account all legitimate credit risk considerations for loan approval and loan pricing.”

• The share of first lien, owner-occupied, site built home purchase loans made to low- or moderate-income borrowers (borrowers with incomes below 80 percent of the area median income) decreased from 30.4 percent in 2020 to 28.7 percent in 2021.  In contrast, the share of first lien refinance loans on such properties made to such borrowers increased from 18.9 percent in 2020 to 24 percent in 2021.

• The share of first lien, owner-occupied, site built home purchase loans that were insured by the Federal Housing Administration decreased from 19.4 percent in 2020 to 17.2 percent in 2021.

In March 2022 the FFIEC released modified 2021 Loan/Application Registers for each HMDA reporting institution. In its press release regarding the data, the CFPB notes that “HMDA data are generally not used alone to determine whether a lender is complying with fair lending laws. The data do not include some legitimate credit risk considerations for loan approval and loan pricing decisions. Therefore, when regulators conduct fair lending examinations, they analyze additional information before reaching a determination about an institution’s compliance with fair lending laws.”