Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (Regulation C): the public data behind fair lending

HMDA does not give you a right against your lender; it gives the public the data that exposes redlining, pricing gaps and which lenders actually approve borrowers like you.

The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1975 is a transparency statute. It does not tell lenders how to decide, what to charge or what to disclose to you. It requires them to record every mortgage application they receive, with its outcome and a long list of characteristics, and to report that file to the government every year for publication. Regulation C (12 CFR Part 1003, CFPB since 2011, with a major expansion effective 2018) defines who reports and what. The resulting dataset, tens of millions of records a year, is the raw material for every redlining case, fair lending examination and Community Reinvestment Act rating in the country.

Which lenders must report

A bank, credit union, savings association or non-bank mortgage company must report if it has an office in a metropolitan area (or, for non-banks, meets asset and activity tests) and originated at least 25 closed-end mortgages in each of the two preceding calendar years, or at least 200 open-end lines of credit. The closed-end threshold was raised to 100 in 2020, struck down by a federal court in 2022, and has been back at 25 since, though the CFPB indicated it would not penalize smaller reporters for that period; confirm the current threshold before relying on it. Small banks with low loan counts, most private lenders, and lenders of business-purpose loans that are not home purchase, improvement or refinancing loans fall outside. A hard money lender that makes 25 or more closed-end dwelling-secured loans a year may be a reporter even though its loans are business-purpose, if the purpose is purchase, improvement or refinancing.

What goes into the Loan Application Register

For each application, whether approved, denied, withdrawn or incomplete, the lender records roughly 48 data points in its Loan Application Register (LAR). The historical fields are the loan type (conventional, FHA, VA, USDA), purpose, amount, property location by census tract, action taken and the reason for denial, and the applicant’s ethnicity, race, sex, age and income. The 2018 expansion added the fields that make pricing analysis possible: the interest rate, the rate spread over the average prime offer rate, total loan costs or points and fees, origination charges, discount points, lender credits, the loan term, the introductory rate period, non-amortizing features, the property value, the combined loan-to-value ratio, the debt-to-income ratio, the credit score and scoring model used, the automated underwriting system and its result, the loan originator’s NMLS identifier, and whether the loan is a reverse mortgage, an open-end line, or for business or commercial purposes. Some of the pricing and credit fields are reported only by larger lenders; small reporters use a partial exemption.

The demographic questions on your application

Section 7 of the Uniform Residential Loan Application (the “1003”) asks your ethnicity, race and sex, with disaggregated options (for example, Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban; Asian Indian, Chinese, Filipino). Those questions exist solely because of HMDA. You may decline to answer. If you apply in person and decline, the loan officer is required to record the information based on visual observation or surname, and your form will note that it was collected that way. The answers may not be used in the credit decision; their only lawful purpose is monitoring. Applications taken by phone, mail or online cannot be completed by observation, so on those the data is simply missing if you decline.

What the public can see

The CFPB publishes a modified LAR for every reporting lender, with a few fields removed or rounded to protect privacy (the exact loan amount, age, credit score and DTI are bucketed, and the application date is dropped). The full dataset is released in the spring following the reporting year, with aggregate and disclosure reports by metropolitan area. Anyone can query it: the share of applications a given lender denied in a census tract, the median rate spread it charged to borrowers of a given race, or how many loans of a given type were made in a county. Journalists, academic researchers, fair housing organizations and the lenders themselves use it; the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council hosts the tools.

Limits and enforcement

HMDA gives a borrower no private right of action and no remedy for a bad decision. It does not require a lender to approve or price any particular loan. It does not identify you: names, addresses and exact figures are not in the public file. Its limits as evidence are real too. The data cannot show whether two applicants were truly similar, because it lacks reserves, employment history, property condition and the underwriter’s notes, so a denial gap in the data is the beginning of an inquiry, not a finding.

Enforcement. The CFPB, the banking regulators and HUD enforce reporting accuracy. Lenders face civil money penalties for errors above tolerance and for failing to report; resubmission is required when error rates exceed the examiners’ thresholds. The data feeds directly into examinations under the Fair Housing Act and ECOA, and into DOJ referrals: most redlining cases of the past decade began as an analysis of a lender’s HMDA footprint compared with its peers.

Using HMDA as a borrower

Before you apply, look up prospective lenders in the public data to compare approval rates for your loan type and county and the typical rate spread they charge. A lender that denies far more FHA applications than peers, or whose loans cluster outside certain neighborhoods, tells you something a rate sheet will not. If you are denied and suspect discrimination, the lender’s own HMDA pattern is useful context for a complaint, and a fair housing organization can pull it. Answer or decline the demographic questions as you wish; either choice has no effect on the decision. Ask for the loan originator’s NMLS number — it is reported with your loan, and you can check it on NMLS Consumer Access as explained in our SAFE Act page.

Key points

Enacted 1975; Regulation C (12 CFR 1003) administered by the CFPB; expanded data set in force since 2018.
Reporting threshold: 25 closed-end mortgages or 200 open-end lines in each of the two prior years (confirm current figure).
Roughly 48 data points per application: outcome, denial reason, pricing, rate spread, DTI, credit score, LTV, property value, NMLS ID.
Demographic questions on the application exist only for HMDA; you may decline, and answers cannot be used in underwriting.
Public modified LAR published each spring with loan amount, age, score and DTI bucketed for privacy.
No private right of action and no individual remedy; enforcement is through reporting accuracy and fair lending referrals.
Business-purpose loans are reported when their purpose is purchase, home improvement or refinancing of a dwelling.

How HMDA applies to you

Frequently asked questions

Do I have to answer the race, ethnicity and sex questions on a mortgage application?

No. Those questions are on the form because of HMDA, and you may decline each one. If you apply face to face and decline, the loan officer must fill in the fields based on observation and surname, and the application records that fact. Your answer, or refusal, may not be used in the credit decision. Online and phone applications simply leave the field blank when you decline.

Can I see my own loan in the HMDA data?

Not as an identifiable record. The public file removes names, addresses and application dates, and rounds the loan amount, age, credit score and debt ratio into ranges. You can identify your lender’s records for your county and loan type and see the pattern, but not a specific row that is yours. The lender itself keeps the full register for at least three years.

Is HMDA data proof that a lender discriminates?

On its own, no. The data shows outcomes and some underwriting fields but not everything a lender considered, so a gap in denial rates is a reason to investigate rather than a conclusion. Regulators and courts use it together with file reviews and matched-pair testing. For a borrower, a lender’s HMDA pattern is useful context for a fair lending complaint, not a substitute for evidence about your own application.

Does a private or hard money lender report under HMDA?

Sometimes. The thresholds are activity-based: a non-bank lender that originated 25 or more closed-end dwelling-secured loans for purchase, improvement or refinancing in each of the last two years generally must report, even though its loans are business-purpose. Lenders below the threshold, and loans for purposes outside those three categories, are not reported, so many small private lenders do not appear in the data.