Insights
Market reports, forecast data, industry insights, and more from iEmergent.
The 2024 HMDA data came out in early April. We had it ready for analysis in our market intelligence dashboarding tool and Mortgage MarketSmart within about a week. Since then, we’ve been busy analyzing the data to find trends.
Depending on the metric, we looked at data for just 2024 as well as longer-term trends from 2020-2024 to provide context. Here are some of those findings.
2024 numbers are up from 2023 but nowhere near COVID boom year levels.
Including all loan purposes (purchase, refi, home improvement, other), there were 6.09 million loans and $1.82 trillion in originations in 2024.
Summary of Total Dollars, 2020-2024 Numbers in purple are percent-change from 2023 to 2024
Dollar originations, for all loan purposes, saw increases across the board compared to 2023. Purchase volume saw a small increase from 2023 to 2024 while refi saw a big increase year over year.
Similarly, 2024 loan volume increased for most loan purposes compared to 2023, except for a small dip in home improvement loans.
Summary of Total Loans, 2020-2024 Numbers in purple are percent-change from 2023 to 2024
If we drill down to just purchase and refi originations, we can see the split for the combined $1.67 trillion is 76.5% purchase and 23.5% refi. The 2024 split is lower purchase/higher refi than 2023, but much higher purchase/lower refi than 2020-2022.
Purchase/Refi Share, 2020-2024
In 2024 there was an increase in both total loans as well as total loan dollars compared to 2023, but the percent increase in dollars (15%) was bigger than that of loan count (8%). This is a reflection of loan size. Borrowers continue to borrow more and more, which is attributed to higher home prices and interest rates. Average loan sizes were:
Now that we have a high-level lay of the land for the overall market, let’s drill in on various aspects of the data.
How did lending to minority borrowers look in 2024? We continue to see disparities among the race/ethnicity segments.
When looking at purchase origination loans (compared to all applications), the purchase origination rate for Black applicants rose from only 7.2% to 7.9%, while the Hispanic and Asian purchase application penetration rates increased more significantly, from 11.1% to 13.7% for Hispanic borrowers and from 6% to 8.7% for Asian borrowers.
Loan Purchase Origination Rates By Race/Ethnicity, 2020-2024
For purchase dollars, the penetration rate of non-Hispanic white borrowers has continued to shrink from 2020-2024. In 2020, 74.7% of all purchase dollars were originated by non-Hispanic white borrowers; in 2024, that rate decreased to 67.9%.
Dollar Purchase Origination Rates By Race/Ethnicity, 2020-2024
Although Black borrowers had shown a climbing purchase dollar penetration rate from 2020-2023, that dropped slightly from 7.1% in 2023 to 6.7% in 2024.
The purchase dollar penetration rates (DPRs) for Asian and Hispanic white borrowers continue to increase. In 2020, their DPRs were 8.4% and 9.8%, respectively. Those numbers have increased to 12.1% and 12.3% in 2024.
Total loan applications were up in 2024 compared to 2023. How did applications break down by loan purpose, application actions, and borrower segment?
In applications, 2023 and 2024 look very similar in terms of the distribution by loan purpose. The primary difference was the increase in refi from 22.5% to 27.2% as interest rates dropped at different points in 2024.
Unlike the increases in both home improvement and “Other” (HELOC, home equity) that occurred first in 2022 and then continued through 2023, there was little to no change in the home improvement/HELOC/home equity percentage of all applications.
Application By Loan Purpose, 2020-2024
Application actions in 2024 were distributed similarly to 2023.
Application Action By Loan Purpose, 2024
Increases in interest rates from 2021 to 2024 continued to exacerbate the housing affordability problem, leading to a much higher overall denial rate (which increased from 12% to 20% in 2023 and back to 19% in 2024).
Application Action, 2020-2024
Fall-out caused by incompletions and withdrawals did not shift much from 2020 to 2024 for all applications.
All Application Denial Reasons, 2024
The #1 denial reason for all types of applications continues to be the debt-to-income (DTI) ratio, increasing steadily from 32% in 2020 to 39% in 2023, with a slight drop to 37% in 2024.
Purchase Application Denial Reasons, 2024
A lack of down payment funds increased significantly from 2020 to 2024 for purchase applications, going from only 8% to 12% as housing affordability worsens.
Overall, for all loan types, the penetration rate of BIPOC/minority applicants is increasing. In 2020, 23.3% of all applications were BIPOC households. By 2024, that increased to 29.8%.
All Loan Applications By Race/Ethnicity, 2020-2024
The largest overall gain was for Black applicants, who accounted for only 6.3% of applications in 2020, but increased to 9.5% in 2024. The Hispanic application penetration rate also increased from 9.2% to 12.2%.
For purchase loan applications, the penetration rate (33.4% in 2024) was higher for BIPOC households than that segment’s penetration rate for originations (31.5% in 2024) because BIPOC households have a higher fallout rate, especially Black applicants.
Black applicants continued to experience the lowest purchase origination rate of all race/ethnic groups: 58% vs. the 70% origination rate of non-Hispanic white applicants.
Purchase Application Actions Taken by Race/Ethnicity, 2024
Denial rates were the primary driver of the disparity. The denial rate for Black applicants was 18%, which is more than double the denial rate for Asian applicants (8%) and double the denial rate for non-Hispanic white applicants (9%).
There are some misconceptions about differences in denial rates between applicants of different races and ethnicities. The difference in denial rate is often attributed to income level; the Black household income level tends to be much lower than that of non-Hispanic white households. Therefore, some people think, this difference explains why denial rates for Black households are lower than non-Hispanic white households.
However, the data prove that this is not the case. The denial rate for Black applicants living in upper income tracts is 14.9%, which is still higher than the denial rate of non-Hispanic white applicants living in low-income tracts (12.1%).
When looking at borrower-based income levels, there are still differences in denial rates that cannot be explained by income levels alone. For instance, the denial rate for low-income Black applicants is 38.9%, while the denial rate for low-income non-Hispanic white applicants is only 27%—a difference of almost 12 percentage points.
Denial Rate By Borrower Race/Ethnicity and Income, 2024
Upper-income Black applicants have approximately the same denial rate (11.3%) as moderate-income non-Hispanic white applicants (11.8%) and much higher rates than middle- or upper-income non-Hispanic white applicants (8.1% and 5.8%, respectively).
Upper income Black and Hispanic white applicants have nearly double the denial rate of upper income non-Hispanic and Asian applicants.
Credit history and debt-to-income ratio (DTI) continue to account for a high percentage (78%) of Black applicant denials. Compare that to 56% for Asian applicants, 65% for non-Hispanic white applicants. Learn more about this and how it impacts the Black homeownership gap.
In 2024, the IMB share of all applications was 54.2%, and the share of all loans was 55.7%. This is a gain from 2023, where IMBs originated just over 50% of all loans. However, this is a much lower share than in 2021, when IMBs captured 62% of all applications and loans.
Loans By Lender Type, 2020-2024
IMBs only accounted for 18% of all lenders (870 IMBs) in 2024. This percent has been dropping since 2021, where 22.8% (976 IMBs) of all lenders were IMBs. We expect to see this number continue to decline.
In 2024, banks’ share of total was 30.4% of applications and 28.9% of all loans—very similar to 2020, but lower than 2023.
There were 2,428 banks reporting to HMDA in 2024, which is down slightly from 2023 (2,517), but an increase from the 2021-2022 counts (1,940 and 1,972),
Credit union market share increased from 14.4% of applications and 15.3% of loans in 2022 to 16.7% of both applications and loans in 2023, down to 15.4% of both in 2024.
Credit unions accounted for 31.7% of all respondents to HMDA.
Banks and credit unions tend to have a larger share of markets when home improvement, home equity, and HELOC business comprise a greater percent of loans.
Here's a look at the top lenders from 2024. In the table images, the red square indicates the sorting column.
Here are the top 30 lenders for all loan types, sorted by 2024 dollar share. You can also see how ranks changed from 2023.
In the top 30 lenders by dollar share, 17 were IMBs, 12 were banks, and 1 was a credit union.
Here are the top 25 lenders for all loan types, sorted by 2024 loan share.
When ranking by loan count rather than loan dollars (image directly above compared to the first table):
Here are the top 30 lenders for only purchase loans, sorted by 2024 dollar share. You can also see the all-loan share and ranking for comparison.
In the top 30 lenders by purchase dollar share, 22 were IMBs, 7 were banks, and 1 was a credit union.
Other findings from the top lender rankings include:
We can look at how lenders perform in LMI and majority minority census tracts and compare that to overall lending leaders.
Notes on the tables in this section:
Here are the top lenders by LMI census tract percentage of total originations.
Here are the top lenders by MMCT tract percentage of total originations.
What we noticed:
1. The purchase penetration (last column) and average loan size of these lenders varies greatly.
When we look at growth in MSAs across the U.S., we see some trends.
Top 30 Markets By % Change in Originations, 2023 to 2024
Of the 200 largest Metro Areas (by total 2024 total loan count):
There were some notable geographic patterns in the purpose %s between markets.
Loans for investment purposes ranged from 6% to 9% of total originations in 2020-2024. And 43 out of the 50 Largest MSAs saw an increase in investor originations.
Originations By Residence/Investor, 2020-2024
The increase in investor activity (or decrease in owner-occupied purchase loans) was even higher in low- to moderate-income (LMI) and majority minority census tracts (MMCT) from 2020 to 2024:
Higher interest rates have the most limiting impact on households that are “on the margin” of affordability. Investors and second home buyers are snatching up affordable inventory from households looking to buy a primary residence.
Now that the 2024 numbers are in, let’s look at what 2025 is forecast to bring.
Based on our mortgage opportunity forecast, we see $1.8 trillion and change in combined (purchase/refi) opportunity this year, a slight uptick of 8% from ~$1.7 trillion in 2024.
Mortgage Originations, Actual and Forecast, 2006-2029
We forecast a 77% purchase, 23% refi split, which is similar to 2024.
As of now, beyond 2025, we expect steady, continued growth, bringing us back to where we’d expect to be with the COVID boom years as outliers.
Keep an eye on our updated forecasts as we adjust these numbers for interest rate changes and other economic factors.