Insights
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The 2025 HMDA data came out in mid-March. We had it ready for analysis in Mortgage MarketSmart within about a week. Since then, we’ve been busy analyzing the data to find trends. Here’s what we found when it comes to mortgage originations, the applications behind those originations, geographic trends, and more.
2025 U.S. Mortgage Originations
2025 Mortgage Loan Application Patterns
2025 Mortgage Trends By Geography
Looking Ahead to 2026
Navigation note: Under each subhead, we’ve provided an “in short” summary—a tl;dr (too long; didn’t read), if you will. You can skim these summaries and dig more into the sections you find most interesting.
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In short: Origination units and dollars grew from 2024 to 2025. Purchase led the way, but refinance share grew.
Origination activity grew in 2025, but dollars outpaced units—especially in refinance—signaling a shift toward larger-balance lending.
Including all loan purposes (purchase, refi, home improvement, other), there were 6.75 million loans and $2.12 trillion in volume in 2025.
2021-2025 U.S. Mortgage Originations By Loan Purpose - Units
2021-2025 U.S. Mortgage Originations By Loan Purpose - Dollars
2025 was not just a larger market overall; refinance regained share in both units and dollars after being suppressed in prior years. Purchase remained the largest category, but its unit share slipped from 57% to 53%, while refinance increased from 24% to 29%. The same pattern appears on the dollar volume side: purchase declined from 70% to 63% of total volume, while refinance rose from 22% to 29%.
Purchase loans continuing to lead the market confirms that the market remained purchase-centered rather than returning to the refinance-dominated structure seen in 2021.
Other (mostly home equity) and home improvement also edged up in both count and volume, though they remained small portions of the overall market.
In short: An increase in average loan size reflects higher home prices and other affordability struggles.
Average loan sizes rose from 2024 to 2025 largely because lending activity became more concentrated among larger-balance transactions and borrowers, particularly in purchase and refinance. Smaller-loan activity was sidelined by affordability pressure, rates, or tighter qualification hurdles.
2021-2025 Average Loan Size By Loan Purpose
The largest dollar increase occurred in purchase lending, where the average loan size rose from $368.1K to $379.6K, indicating that the purchase market continued to skew toward larger-balance loans in 2025. This trend is most likely the result of still-elevated home prices, limited inventory at the lower end of the market, and stronger participation from borrowers buying more expensive homes. When affordability is tight, entry-level buyers tend to get squeezed out first, which can push the average loan size up even if the market is not broadly booming.
Refinance also posted a notable increase, from $272.9K to $311.2K, which is especially meaningful because it indicates that the refinance activity that did occur in 2025 was increasingly concentrated among larger-loan borrowers.
In short: Conforming led purchase share, but government-backed programs helped lenders serve additional borrower segments.
Purchase lending remained conforming-led in 2025, but modest gains in FHA and VA lending suggest that a greater share of market growth came from products that support first-time buyers, moderate-income households, borrowers with lower down payments, and borrowers with more difficult credit profiles.
2021-2025 Purchase Lending By Type - Units
2021-2025 Purchase Lending By Type - Dollars
Although the purchase market has remained conforming-led, the mix shifted slightly from 2024 to 2025 toward government lending, especially FHA and VA. In loan counts:
Conforming still accounted for 68% of purchase loans in 2025, down slightly from 69% in 2024
On the dollar side:
Product mix continues to impact market share; lenders concentrated in conventional lending may still perform well in overall purchase lending but may struggle to penetrate key borrower segments if they are not competitive in FHA and VA. Lenders with weak government-loan capabilities may miss opportunity in communities with larger concentrations of first-time buyers, younger households, veterans, Black and Hispanic borrowers, and lower-wealth households.
Turn Insights Into Action Using government programs and creating targeted credit products that serve the buyer types mentioned above can help lenders capture more opportunity while building homeownership in their communities.
In short: IMBs continued their dominance in originations, especially share of dollars.
IMBs grew their unit share by about 2% from 2024 to 2025, taking a bit from both banks and credit unions.
2021-2025 Mortgage Units By Lender Type
Dollar share by lender type remained relatively stable from 2024 to 2025. IMBs continue to dominate with more than 60% of mortgage loan dollar share.
2021-2025 Mortgage Dollars By Lender Type
Banks shed share—that IMBs swooped up—during COVID the downturn. Now that the market is recovering, IMBs have kept their momentum to capture more than half of applications.
In short: Although 2025 showed 9% growth in total applications from 2024, the expansion was driven more by rate-sensitive refinance activity than by a meaningful increase in homebuyer demand—indicating that affordability constraints, inventory shortages, or both were still limiting purchase growth.
From 2024 to 2025, the market stabilized and began a modest recovery, but not evenly across loan purposes. Total applications increased from 10.57 million to 11.55 million, a gain of roughly 9%, indicating that mortgage demand strengthened somewhat after the 2023 trough and 2024 stabilization. However, growth was not driven by a broad-based surge in home purchase activity.
2021-2025 Mortgage Loan Applications By Loan Purpose
The most significant driver of growth was refi lending, for which applications rose from 2.86 million to 3.76 million, increasing its share of total applications from 27% to 33%.
Purchase applications were essentially flat, rising only slightly from 5.16 million to 5.23 million. Because total market volume grew faster than purchase volume, purchase application share fell from 49% to 45% with the difference going to refi applications.
Other (home equity) lending remained flat at about 1.37 million, while home improvement ticked up only marginally from 1.18 million to 1.19 million. Both saw their shares of the total market drop slightly, as the gain for refinances was faster and larger.
In short: IMBs continued their dominance in application share.
IMBs grew their application share from 54.6% in 2024 to 57.7% in 2025. They took part of a percentage point from credit unions and almost three percentage points from banks.
2021-2025 Applications By Lender Type
In short: Overall application conversion remained essentially unchanged because gains from lower denials were offset by other fall-out reasons.
Across all mortgage applications, market pull-through weakened sharply after 2021 and then stabilized.
2021-2025 Mortgage Application Outcomes
The share of applications that made it to origination fell from 65% in 2021 to 58% in 2023 and has remained at that level in both 2024 and 2025.
Denials, which peaked at 20% in 2023, dropped slightly to 18% in 2025, but the overall origination rate did not improve because withdrawn, incomplete, and unbooked outcomes increased slightly.
The application outcome data for 2025 suggests a market that was no longer worsening but not improving significantly in terms of overall conversion.
In short: From 2024 to 2025, most categories either held steady or improved slightly, with lower denial rates in every purpose category except purchase, where performance was already comparatively strong.
Application action patterns were relatively stable from 2024 to 2025, with modest improvement in pull-through for a few product categories rather than a broad shift across the market.
2021-2025 Application Actions By Loan Purpose
Purchase lending remained the strongest-performing segment with 68% of applications originated in both 2024 and 2025. Denials edged down from 11% in 2024 to 10% in 2025.
Refinance also improved slightly from 2024 to 2025, with the application to origination rate rising from 51% to 52% and denials falling from 21% to 19%.
Home improvement lending improved modestly from 2024 to 2025, with the application to origination rate increasing from 50% to 51% and denials declining from 32% to 30%, while incomplete applications fell from 7% to 6%.
Other (home equity) application purposes showed a noticeable decrease in the denial rate from 35% to 31%. Yet, at the same time, withdrawn, incomplete, and unbooked rates all increased slightly, perhaps because these transactions are often less standardized.
In short: From 2024 to 2025, denial patterns were stable, but down payment and collateral became more prominent, suggesting affordability and valuation constraints were intensifying even as credit history denials eased somewhat.
Down payment pressure continued to rise further—from 5% in 2024 to 6% in 2025, up from 4% in 2021-2023. Other major denial reasons were mostly flat or slightly improved. This indicates that cash-to-close challenges became more acute in 2025.
2021-2025 Application Denial Reasons
Comparing denial reason changes from 2024 to 2025:
Overall, the denial mix stayed anchored in DTI while credit history denials eased somewhat. Affordability-related barriers—especially down payment and collateral—gained importance at the margin, while.
To this point, our analysis has been at the national level, but now let’s look at some market-level trends in the largest metro areas in the U.S.
In this section, click on any image to view a larger version.
In short: From 2024 to 2025, mortgage growth was broad-based across major metros. In every market, dollar growth outpaced loan growth, which signaled that the rebound was driven not just by more loans, but by increasing loan sizes.
In every top-30 metro shown, originations dollars grew faster than loan counts from 2024 to 2025. Markets added loans, but they added even more dollars.
Markets with the Largest % Change Growth in Dollars, 2024 to 2025
The strongest dollar growth was concentrated in a mix of high-cost and Midwest markets. San Jose stands out the most, with 29% growth in dollars and 20% growth in loans, followed by:
Read our analysis of the Idaho mortgage market to see data behind why Boise is seeing such big growth. The state is seeing a boom in new home construction related to job and population growth.
Several Midwestern markets showed double-digit increases, so growth was not limited to coastal or traditionally high-priced markets:
Click any of the linked names above to view our in-depth market analysis.
Some of the market-level gaps between dollar and loan growth are especially notable. For example, Detroit’s much stronger growth in dollars (23%) compared to loans (12%) shows there was a meaningful increase in average size, not just more transactions. That pattern likely reflects some combination of:
In short: Most of the nation’s largest mortgage markets grew from 2024 to 2025, but they look different when measured by loans versus dollars. Loan count rankings highlight breadth of activity, while dollar rankings highlight where larger balances and higher-cost housing drive market size.
Growth was fairly broad-based across major markets. Most of the largest metros grew, seeing higher totals in 2025 compared to 2024 for both loan count and dollars. The growth in dollars, however, is more pronounced than growth in loan count in most of these markets.
2025 Largest U.S. Mortgage Markets - Loan Count Growth
2025 Largest U.S. Mortgage Markets - Dollar Volume Growth
Growth in dollars was not always just tied to an increase in loan count, so many markets occupy different ranks between the two charts. Some are like San Francisco, which is #20 in loan count, but #6 in dollars, generating far more volume per loan because of much higher home prices.
By contrast, markets like Chicago, Atlanta, Phoenix, Houston, and Philadelphia rank very high in loan count but somewhat lower in dollar volume, suggesting they are large, active lending markets with comparatively lower loan sizes than the coastal high-cost metros.
Markets that rank high in loan count but lower in dollars may reflect broader participation for all borrowers, while markets that rank much higher in dollars than counts are more likely to be dominated by higher-cost housing and borrowers with the income, assets, or financing structures needed to support larger loans.
In short: Metro loan purpose mix differs sharply across the country, with purchase-led growth markets standing apart from more refinance-heavy coastal markets.
Market-level product mix is useful to analyze because it shows that metro mortgage markets are not all behaving the same way. Product mix varies a lot, especially between purchase-leaning Sun Belt markets and more refi-heavy, high-cost coastal markets.
2025 Largest U.S. Mortgage Markets - Loan Purpose Mix
In purchase-heavy markets, lenders’ performance will depend heavily on execution, realtor and builder relationships, and affordability-oriented product strategy rather than waiting for refinance to return.
Lenders should not expect one product strategy to fit every market. The best approach depends on whether local demand is driven primarily by home purchase, refinance sensitivity, or homeowner liquidity and renovation needs.
Want to find out which product mixes are best for each of your markets? Login to Mortgage MarketSmart if you’re a customer or request a demo to get access.
In short: Purchase-driven markets tend to be either high-growth markets or metros in the sun belt while high-cost and coastal markets tend to be more refi-driven.
Each year, the split between purchase vs. refi lending share changes based on a number of factors (primarily, interest rates), which is discussed for the U.S. above in the mortgage originations overview section.
When you drill into an individual market and check the purchase vs. refi split, that information can tell you a bit about the market.
Top Metros Ranked By Purchase Share
Sun Belt and faster-growth markets tend to be more purchase-driven. Houston, Austin, San Antonio, Dallas, Orlando, Jacksonville, Oklahoma City, and Charleston all show purchase shares from 59% to 71%, with smaller refinance shares. These are markets where household formation, in-migration, and home sales activity are a larger driver of lending demand.
Top Metros Ranked By Refinance Share
High-cost and coastal markets show a larger refinance component, such as Los Angeles, San Jose, San Francisco, San Diego, Salt Lake City, and Providence.
Also ranked high in refinance are some Midwest markets like Milwaukee, Detroit, and Grand Rapids as well as mid-Atlantic markets like Philadelphia and Baltimore. These markets may have had weaker home purchase affordability, slower turnover, or borrower behavior more influenced by rate changes.
In short: Demand for Home Improvement and Other (home equity) loan types vary by market based on age of homes, home value, and need for equity-based lending.
Borrower demand is not just built on buying or refinancing homes, but also on maintaining, updating, or adapting existing housing.
Home Improvement and Home Equity lending is highly market-specific: older Midwest and Northeast metros tend to show stronger home improvement and home equity activity thanks to more renovation-driven demand, more seasoned homeowners with tappable equity, or housing stock that creates greater need for repair and reinvestment financing.
Top Metros Ranked By Home Improvement Share
The Home Equity chart tells a related but slightly different story.
Top Metros Ranked By Home Equity Share
While many of the same metros appear near the top, the ranking is a bit more dispersed and highlights markets where homeowners may be more actively borrowing against accumulated equity.
Some expensive coastal and mixed-market metros, like Los Angeles and Portland, rank higher on equity than they do on home improvement, which may suggest stronger demand for cash-out or equity-access products even when home improvement itself is not the dominant use case.
At the other end of the spectrum, several Texas metros and a few faster-growth Sun Belt markets rank near the bottom for both loan purposes. San Antonio, Austin, Houston, and Dallas post especially low home improvement shares, and they also sit near the bottom for home equity. That reinforces the idea that these markets are newer, more purchase-driven, and less dependent on renovation or equity-based borrowing.
HMDA data is great. As you can see, we love it! Looking at industry trends is helpful (and fun) to see where we’ve headed at a macro level.
But the power of iEmergent’s data and tools comes with drilling down into individual markets and segments—and into each lender’s data, alone and compared to peers—to find actionable data that drives strategy.
We’ve adjusted our 2026 forecasts based on reaction so far to the War in Iran, and we have another forecast update coming soon based on this 2025 HMDA data.
If you want access to analyze HMDA data, or to view what’s ahead in individual markets, you’ll need access to our data and tools. Schedule a demo now.
Look for separate posts on additional HMDA data insights, including race/ethnicity trends, income-based findings, application fallout patterns, and lender rankings.
Updated: View our detailed analysis of 2025 HMDA data by race/ethnicity