The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council today released the 2015 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data on mortgage lending transactions at 6,913 financial institutions. The data encompasses 12.1 million mortgage applications, 7.4 million of which resulted in loan originations — a 22 percent increase from 2014; refinance originations rose by 36 percent.
Overall, loans backed by the Federal Housing Administration, Veterans Administration or federal farm programs accounted for 39 percent of all new mortgages in 2015, up two points from the year before but down from the peak of 54 percent in 2009. FHA market share rose four points, largely attributable to reductions in its mortgage insurance premiums, FFIEC said. The FHA share of refinances also rose by five points in 2015.
The HMDA data showed that black and Hispanic borrowers continued increasing their share of originations in 2015, growing to a combined 13.1 percent, while the share of loans originated by Asian Americans fell slightly. The share of home purchase loans going to low- and moderate-income borrowers rose one point to 27 percent, and the share of refinances by LMI borrowers was at 22 percent.
“Higher-priced” loans — those with APRs that exceed prime offer rates by 1.5 points for first-lien loans — accounted for 6 percent of all first-lien loans in 2015, down two points from 2014.
