Truth Starts Here

Understanding which data sources to use for your marketing strategy is everything. Without the right data foundation, your entire marketing approach rests on assumptions rather than insights. You can’t develop targeted strategies for demographic segments if you can’t accurately identify those segments in the first place.

I recently asked mortgage professionals which data sources they rely on for identifying demographic lending trends in their markets. The choices were:

1. Public property records
2. MLS listings
3. Internal loan origination data
4. HMDA data

The responses were telling. Some leaned on property records, others on MLS listings, but one source overwhelmingly stood out: HMDA data. And for good reason.

Not All Data Is Created Equal

If your goal is to understand lending trends by demographic segment, you need data that is:

• Granular. It has to help you get borrower-level insights to help build borrower profiles. When you know exactly who your borrowers are, you can meet them where they are. Whether it’s digital campaigns targeting specific demographics, community partnerships in underserved areas, or multilingual outreach strategies, borrower profiles turn marketing from guesswork into strategy.
• Accurate. Standardized and validated at the federal level. We included this criteria here because, without standardized data, you can imagine how every lender might define borrower demographics differently, which will make comparison and trend analyses impossible in a market.
• Compliant. Finally, your data you plug in your marketing strategy has to be aligned with laws, from fair lending to consumer protection. Some data providers attempt to approximate borrower demographics by blending business data, neighborhood statistics, or even social media activity. These data sets are typically marketed and sold as something very special, but they are imbued with problems and potential risks. If your demographic data isn’t coming from federally standardized sources like HMDA, you need to ask: Where is this data coming from? Has the borrower consented to its use? Could this data be exposing my institution to fair lending risks?

Now Let's Break Down the Options.

Public Property Records

Public property records, including deeds of trust and mortgage recordings, offer insights into who bought what, when, and for how much. You can find data about mortgage financing vs. cash deals. This kind of data is not available for all geographies. Consider the map on National Prices using such data, as shown on NY Fed's Economic Research's page.

Public property records may help track market activity in 1,200 counties but apart from missing data for 2,000 other counties, this data set doesn’t reveal who the borrowers are demographically.

Public property records aren’t a substitute for standardized, compliant data like HMDA. If you’re relying on Personal Identifiable Information (PII) to estimate borrower demographics, and market size, you’re taking on unnecessary risk. Stick to federally validated sources for fair, accurate, and defensible insights.

MLS Listings Data: Great for Housing Demand, Limited for Borrower Analysis

MLS data is valuable for understanding housing demand, pricing trends, and inventory levels. It’s especially useful for purchase activity—helping you see what types of homes are selling, at what price points, and how quickly. You can also collaborate with real estate agents to gain market insights or connect with potential borrowers early in their homebuying journey.

But when it comes to using it to formulate your marketing outreach or lending strategies, it falls short on several aspects. MLS tracks properties, not borrower characteristics, making it difficult to analyze lending trends by race, ethnicity, sex, or income. Since MLS only covers homes on the market, it misses refinance activity, a major part of mortgage lending, especially if we continue to see rates fall. MLS is top-of-the-funnel data for home purchases. It helps track market demand and inventory. But for deeper insights into who is borrowing, who is being denied, and why, HMDA data remains the go-to source.

Internal Loan Originations Data: Essential but Very Limited

This is valuable for your own institution’s lending trends, but it doesn’t show market-wide activity. You’re flying blind on competitor trends and broader demographic shifts, if you are relying on your internal data.

HMDA Data: The Gold Standard for Borrower Insights

HMDA provides borrower-level insights, allowing you to build detailed, compliant borrower profiles. HMDA data can be blended with census data. In fact FFIEC releases Demographics data for that exact purpose. This capability is a game-changer for mortgage strategy, fair lending analysis, and market expansion. For example, you can build borrower profiles like this:

Unlike other data sources, HMDA gives you granular details about each loan application, bringing data insights about consumers, properties, geographies, lenders, and products together, without compromising consumer data privacy. It includes ability to analyze:

• Borrower demographics – Race, ethnicity, sex, and income
• Loan details – Loan type (FHA,VA, Conventional Conforming, Jumbo, HELOC, Reverse Mortgage), purpose (purchase, refinance, cash-out-refinance, home improvement, other purpose), and amount
• Application outcomes – Approvals, denials, and reasons for denial
• Borrower behavior at a local market level - mortgage shopping, property preferences.
• Lender activity – Who is lending in which markets, at what volumes, and to whom

With this data, you can build those borrower profiles, estimate market size, test product-market fit, adjust product strategy to avoid disparate impact and fair lending risks, present to your board or to your business and referral partners. It unifies your marketing strategy, outreach, and communication.

The Truth Starts with the Right Data

When it comes to understanding borrower demographics, not all data sources are up to the task. MLS listings, public property records, and internal loan data each have their uses, but they fall short in providing the granular, accurate, standardized, and compliant insights needed for real demographic analysis.

If you’re serious about fair lending compliance, market expansion, and competitive strategy, your foundation must be borrower-level data that is transparent, reliable, and actionable. That’s why HMDA data stands apart—it’s the only dataset that provides a market-wide, federally validated view of who is borrowing, who isn’t, and why.

The truth starts with the right data. Are you using it?

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