The FFIEC has released the 2009 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data this morning. HMDA data cover most mortgage loan applications. The data is released annually. While consumers can ask for the data from lenders directly as soon as April 1st, the Federal Reserve holds its release of the entire set of loans until the middle of September. The new data covers mortgage loan applications made in 2009.

The data was released at 11:10 AM EST. Users can download software that runs with the data, or they can pull out aggregated reports for different geographic areas.

The HMDA data has been released with loan pricing data since 2005. In that regime, HMDA reported the cost of loans in the relation to current 10-year Treasury notes. For instance, if the 10 year (TNX) yield was 2.86 percent at the time of the loan’s origination, then the loan cost would be reported if the price was at or above 5.86 percent. There was a 300 basis point gap for first lien loans and a 500-basis (more…)

The Dodd-Frank bill will require lenders to disclose more data about their lending, but the fundamental problems with HMDA remain largely unresolved. Dodd-Frank says that it will collect, and then disseminate, the following new categories within an updated HMDA by no later than 2012:

• age of borrower
• borrower credit score
• total points and fees payable at origination
• the spread between the loan’s interest rate and the corresponding treasury note of similar maturity
• value of the collateral pledged against the loan
• non-amortizing loan features
• length before loan reset (months)

Those are some good ideas. I think that there is going to be a substantial discussion about (more…)