Why the 2024 HMDA Data Release Matters More Than Ever
For mortgage lenders, fintechs, and advocates, HMDA remains the gold standard for transparency, completeness, and competitive insight.
Picture a Gartner Magic Quadrant-style graph, charting transparency on one axis and completeness on the other. If you’re a stakeholder—whether you’re a lender, servicer, investor, fintech innovator, or part of an advocacy group—you want to live in that coveted upper-right quadrant. That’s where the most transparent, most complete data lives. And there’s only one dataset that gets you there consistently: HMDA, the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act loan-level data.
Consider the alternatives. You could try to build market insight from deed of trust records filed at county recorder offices. These may score some points on transparency, but only if you can access them. As the Federal Reserve Bank of New York recently pointed out, there are significant coverage gaps across states and counties (see the national tab in this resource). And even where this data exists, it tells only part of the story. It won’t show you who applied and was denied, where application fallout occurred, or what borrowers actually paid. It’s also a non-starter for fair lending analysis.
Loan Origination System (LOS) data? Not publicly available, not standardized, and often limited by restrictive terms. Would you want your competitors, using the same LOS, to access your performance metrics? Probably not. And survey data? Some sources like the Census ACS are rigorous, but all surveys come with limitations - sampling, lag times, and methodological assumptions that may or may not align with your strategic needs.
Now enter HMDA. As of March 2025, over 5,122 lenders submitted their 2023 HMDA LAR data. And today, the 2024 figures are rolling out, offering full coverage of the application lifecycle across every state, county, and census tract, including U.S. island areas. HMDA shows you the complete picture: applications, originations, denials, pricing, product mix, borrower profiles, lender activity, and property characteristics. All at the loan level. This means you can slice, group, compare, and analyze however your strategy demands - by geography, borrower demographics, origination channel, loan type, and beyond.
Here is how we model the loan application lifecycle or waterfall.
The 2024 HMDA data release just dropped. Now’s the moment to move from curiosity to clarity. Don’t just download the dataset - use it. Know where you stand in the market, where your competitors are gaining ground, and how the lending landscape is shifting—by the numbers. At Polygon Research, we believe that upper-right quadrant isn’t just a metaphor. It’s where the best decisions are made. And we’re here to help you get there—with data you can trust and tools designed to turn complexity into competitive advantage.
