On September 22, the CFPB released its annual report providing an overview of the residential mortgage trends and activity in 2021 based on data collected from thousands of U.S. lending institutions under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA). Some of the key findings in the report include:
- Increases in originations driven by home purchase loans: Close-end mortgage originations increased by 2.4%, from 13.4 million in 2020 to 13.7 million in 2021. The report also noted that while the 66.8% in originations from 2019 to 2020 were largely due to refinances, the increase from 2020 to 2021 was due to large home purchase loans.
- Decreases in HMDA reporting: The number of financial institutions reporting data on close-end mortgage loans dropped by 3.1%.
- Increase in combined market share by top 25 closed-end lenders: the top 25 closed-end lenders by loan volume increased their combined market share to 43.9%, and accounted for 53% of all refinance loans.
- Increases in home purchase loans across minority groups: The report also noted slight upticks certain minority borrower groups in their shares of home purchase loans from 2020 to 2021—5.5% to 7.1 % (Asian), 7.3% to 7.9% (Black), and 9.1% to 9.2% (Hispanic).
Putting It Into Practice: Data collected under HMDA provides regulators, such as the CFPB, insight as to whether financial institutions are serving the housing needs of local communities and can help identify possible discriminatory lending patterns. The CFPB has historically used such data and findings to inform its enforcement activities.