Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) Series

The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA), enacted by Congress in 1975, requires most mortgage lenders located in metropolitan areas to report data about their housing-related lending activity. The purpose of the HMDA is to examine whether or not financial institutions are serving the housing needs of their communities, help public officials to allocate public-sector investments in order to draw private investment to areas where it is needed, and to identify possible discriminatory lending patterns. The HMDA data are collected from lending institutions and cover home purchase and home improvement loans and refinancings, including loan originations, loan purchases, and applications that were denied, incomplete or withdrawn. The Private Mortgage Insurance Companies (PMIC) data refer to applications for mortgage insurance to insure home purchase mortgages and to insure mortgages to refinance existing obligations. With some exceptions, for each transaction the institution reports data about the loan (or application), such as the type and amount of the loan made (or applied for) and, in limited circumstances, its price, the disposition of the application, such as whether it was denied or resulted in an origination of a loan, the property to which the loan relates, such as its type (single-family versus multi-family), and location (including the census tract), the sale of the loan, if it was sold, and the applicant's and co-applicant's ethnicity, race, sex, and income.