The Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA), enacted by Congress in 1975, requires most mortgage lenders located in metropolitan areas to collect, report, and disseminate data about their housing-related lending activity. The public database of lending activity is called the Loan/ Application Register (LAR). PolicyMap aggregated data on home loans from the LAR into indicators useful to policymakers and descriptive of neighborhoods and housing markets into its Home Mortgage Data indicators. PolicyMap’s Home Mortgage Data is restricted to loans for owner-occupied 1-4 unit homes. The indicators include data on all home loans, which includes both home purchase loans and home refinance loans, and indicators specific to either home purchase loans or refinance loans. PolicyMap aggregated data on the number of home loans that were originated and loan applications that were denied. When performing aggregations and calculations on the LAR data, medians were not calculated where the count of loan events of that type was less than five. Percentages were not calculated where the denominator was less than five. These places are identified on the map as having Insufficient Data.
In HMDA, loans guaranteed by the USDA Farm Service Agency (FSA) and those guaranteed by the USDA Rural Housing Service (RHS) are counted in the same category. FSA loans are intended for farmers who cannot qualify for conventional loans due to insufficient financial resources and farmers who have suffered financial setbacks due to natural disasters. RHS guarantees mostly apply to loans for essential community facilities in rural areas. For more on FSA-insured lending, see http://www.fsa.usda.gov/FSA/webapp?area=home&subject=fmlp&topic=landing .