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Why Today’s Annual HMDA Data Release Matters More Than Ever

By Lyubomira Buresch posted 03-31-2025 13:44

  
magic quadrant for mortgage data
In a world of incomplete and closed-off mortgage data, HMDA stands apart - transparent, comprehensive, and essential for smart strategy and fair lending.

Why Today’s Annual HMDA Data Release Matters More Than Ever

Picture a Gartner Magic Quadrant-style graph, charting transparency on one axis and completeness on the other. If you're a lender, servicer, investor, fintech, or advocacy group, you want your data sources to land squarely in the upper-right quadrant: transparent and complete. That’s where you’ll find the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data.
magic quadrant for mortgage data

Why HMDA is the Benchmark

Today marks the release of the annual HMDA dataset, and it’s a big deal for the mortgage industry. As of March 2025, 5,122 lenders reported loan-level data for 2023. Later today, we’ll see what that number looks like for 2024. This data spans every state, county, and census tract in which they originated or denied a loan—nationwide, plus island areas.

HMDA captures the full application lifecycle. You can measure pull-through rates, analyze denials (including reasons), and explore rich details about the loan, the lender, the borrower, and the property. And because it’s all at the loan level, you can slice, group, and pivot the data however your strategy demands—by borrower segment, geography, channel, product type, and more.

From Mortgage Application to Funded Loans

What Are the Alternatives?

Consider the alternatives: deed of trust data from county recorder offices? This checks some boxes for transparency - if you can get it. See the Federal Reserve Bank of New York pointing out A LOT of gaps here: Mapping Home Price Changes - FEDERAL RESERVE BANK of NEW YORK (click on the national tab). As for completeness, while this data has certain advantages, it does not show application fallout and denials, it does not show loan price details, and it is a non-starter for fair lending.
 
How about Loan Origination System (LOS) data? Not open, not complete, and probably not widely available. Would you agree to terms granting your competitors on the same system to see your data?
 
Finally: survey data? It depends - rigorous surveys do exist (e.g. Census ACS). If you're relying on survey data, read its methodology and see how it stacks up.

HMDA Data: Complete. Transparent. Actionable.

That’s what makes today’s HMDA data release a strategic asset for Credit Unions. The beauty of HMDA data is that it's open and empowers credit unions to:
  • Benchmark performance and pricing
  • Understand how borrowers are shopping and applying
  • Ensure fair lending compliance with confidence
  • Improve member service and outreach
  • Create relevant content built on specific HMDA insights
  • Make data-informed decisions at every level
At Polygon Research, we specialize in turning this data into actionable insights for credit unions. Tools like HMDAVision are built with open data and your mission in mind - so you can serve your members with precision, transparency, and impact. 

Today’s release? We’re on it.

We’re already working with the 2024 data and getting it ready for insight. Curious how your credit union can make the most of it?

👉Come find us here

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