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Abstract
The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) requires most lending institutions to report on home mortgage loan applications, including the application outcome, loan- and applicant-related information, and property location. Annual data collected through HMDA provide a unique set of files with information at the neighborhood level. This guide describes the HMDA original source data and the HMDA indicators available on DataPlace (http://beta.dataplace.org). The guide also illustrates how HMDA indicators can be used to shed light on such issues as neighborhood investment trends, changes in the racial and economic composition of home buyers, disparities in home loan access, and subprime lending.
Introduction
The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) requires most lending institutions to report
mortgage loan applications, including the application outcome, loan- and applicant-related
information, and property location. Annual data collected through HMDA provide a unique set of
annually updated files with information at the neighborhood level. HMDA-based measures can
begin to answer a wide array of questions:
- What is happening to home prices in a particular area?
- Has home investment in certain low-income neighborhoods lagged compared with that in
other neighborhoods?
- How has the racial or economic composition of borrowers changed over time?
- Have minorities or women had trouble accessing mortgage credit?
- In what kinds of neighborhoods are subprime loans concentrated?
- What types of borrowers are most likely to receive subprime loans?
Armed with hard facts, users of all types can better execute their work: Advocates can launch
consumer education campaigns in neighborhoods being targeted by subprime lenders, planners
can better tailor housing policy to market conditions, affordable housing developers can identify
gentrifying neighborhoods, and activists can confront banks with poor lending records in lowincome
communities.
This companion guide is the first in a series explaining the data files available on DataPlace™, a
Web site providing neighborhood-level data to support well-informed policy decisions and
results-driven programs in the housing and community development fields. The series describes
the data files and explains how they can be applied to real-world questions. In addition to
supporting the use of HMDA indicators in DataPlace, this guide provides a general introduction
to the original source files from which the DataPlace indicators were derived. Reviewing the
source files will enable interested users to better interpret the DataPlace indicators and pursue
more in-depth analysis.
The first section of this guide describes the background of—as well as the general caveats
involved in—the use of HMDA data and other related files, and introduces the HMDA indicators
available on DataPlace. The second section delves into the contents of the HMDA source files
on lenders and loan applications. The final section shows how DataPlace indicators derived
from HMDA data can be used to shed light on such issues as neighborhood investment trends,
changes in the racial and economic composition of home buyers, disparities in home loan
access, and subprime lending.
(End of excerpt. The entire guide
is available in PDF format.)
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