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CFPB publishes Beginner’s Guide to Accessing and Using Home Mortgage Disclosure Act Data

Data available through the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) provides the most comprehensive source of publicly available information on the U.S. mortgage market. Under HMDA, financial institutions maintain, report, and publicly disclose loan-level information about mortgage applications and loans. HMDA data can help show whether lenders are serving the housing needs of their communities, give diverse stakeholders information that helps to guide policy, and shed light on lending patterns that could potentially be discriminatory, including through redlining or unjustified disparities in lending outcomes that can drive racial and economic inequality.

For more than four decades, public release of HMDA data has made the mortgage market more transparent, competitive, and fair. HMDA data are collected, processed, and published by the CFPB on behalf of the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the National Credit Union Administration, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. The agencies made the data available to the public in a wide variety of data products, including via an online HMDA Data Browser and a new HMDA Maps tool.

Today, we’ve published the Beginner’s Guide to Accessing and Using Home Mortgage Disclosure Act Data , a resource to support a range of stakeholders in accessing and using this information. The Beginner’s Guide is designed to support users by providing:

  • An explanation of what the data are and which institutions report them
  • Data products available to the public and how to access and use them
  • Step-by-step instructions on how to create useful data summaries for specific geographies.

Visit our page for more information about HMDA, and for technical questions about HMDA reporting, contact HMDAHelp@cfpb.gov or submit a question online.

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