Mortgage market intelligence takes many forms and comes in a variety of scales, from the macro to the incredibly micro. We get asked ALL THE TIME how much detail any one credit union needs. The honest answer is that different credit unions will prefer to examine the markets they serve with different levels of granularity depending on their unique lending goals. But every credit union business leader can benefit from having a working knowledge of the various levels of data available and what each entails.
Many sizes and shapes
iEmergent provides a host of property-level details and can slice demographic data, competitive intel, and mortgage forecasts down to the census tract level. Census tracts are small subdivisions of a county that contain about 1,200 to 8,000 residents. They are also the smallest area of geographic data available for Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) loan-level reporting. Here are a few more of the most common geographic boundaries used by lenders, from small to large:
- Micropolitan statistical areas have at least one urban cluster of 10,000 to 50,000 people, plus adjacent territory with a high degree of social and economic integration with the core.
- Metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) are like micropolitan ones, only the urban cluster has a population over 50,000.
- Core-based statistical areas (CBSAs) is a collective term for both micro- and metropolitan statistical areas.
- A metropolitan division (MD) is a county or counties within a large MSA. An MD will have a population of at least 2.5 million.
- Combined statistical areas (CSAs) consist of two or more adjacent CBSAs with significant employment and commuting ties.
Clear as mud? Watch our quick video exploring Washington, DC — or, to be more specific, the Washington-Arlington-Alexandria, DC-VA-MD-WV CBSA — to see how it breaks down into counties and census tracts.
Granular is powerful
You may remember from your grade-school science class that the smaller the object you wish to see with a microscope, the higher the magnification power you need. At iEmergent, we truly believe that granular data is powerful. By building our mortgage forecasts from the census tract up, we empower credit unions to examine their communities closely and pinpoint mortgage lending coverage gaps and opportunities. While data that tells you that a city is growing is great, data that drills down and shows you exactly which demographic groups are growing within which neighborhoods is better. In a housing market where few of your members can afford to invest in a mortgage, granular data is the key to finding the right places to lend at the right times.
For a real-world example and more about the many datasets available with Mortgage MarketSmart, read the full article.