The federal law that makes mortgage lenders collect and publish loan-level data on loans secured by a dwelling, including apartment buildings and 1-4 unit rentals.
HMDA is a federal disclosure law, carried out through the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Regulation C. Its stated purposes are to help show whether lenders are serving the housing needs of their communities, to guide public investment, and to help identify possible discriminatory lending patterns. Covered banks, savings associations, credit unions and for-profit mortgage companies record each covered loan and loan request and report the file every year.
What makes HMDA useful in commercial lending is its definition of a dwelling, which includes a multifamily residential structure. A loan made primarily for a business purpose is excluded unless it is a home purchase loan, a home improvement loan or a refinancing. So a loan to buy or refinance an apartment building or a rental house is reported, with its amount, rate, term, number of units and location.
For a borrower or broker, that is the only public loan-level record of who makes apartment and small rental loans, including lenders with no bank charter. Its gaps matter too. Loans on unimproved land, temporary financing and loans on non-residential property are not reported.
How it shows up in the data here
HMDA is where this site's loans made on dwellings come from: multifamily loans of five units or more and 1-4 unit investor loans, by lender, year, state and county. Counts under 5 are never shown and no borrower is named. See multifamily lenders by loans made, 1-4 unit investor lenders and loan comps for multifamily. Office, retail, industrial and land loans are not in HMDA.
Go further
- Multifamily lenders by loans made: Ranked from HMDA records.
- 1-4 unit investor lenders by loans made: Lenders on small rentals, from HMDA.
- Loan comps, multifamily: Recent multifamily loans by size and place.
- How to read HMDA data for multifamily and investor loans: HMDA is the one public file that lists individual apartment and rental-house loans by lender, amount, county and year. It covers loans on dwellings only, and not every lender reports.
- How to pick banks for a deal with public data: Public filings cannot tell you which bank will say yes. They can tell you which banks are large enough, already hold loans like yours and lend where the property is. That is enough to turn four thousand banks into six phone calls.
Related terms
- Regulation C: The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau rule, 12 CFR part 1003, that carries out the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act and sets which lenders report and what they report.
- HMDA loan register (LAR): The loan-by-loan file a mortgage lender keeps and reports each year under HMDA, with one row for every covered loan and loan request and what happened to it.
- Legal Entity Identifier (LEI): A unique 20-character code, issued under the ISO 17442 standard, that identifies a legal entity anywhere in the world.
- Multifamily (5+ units): Residential rental property with five or more units. Banks, credit unions and HMDA all draw the line between four units and five.
- Investor 1-4 unit property: A house, duplex, triplex or fourplex held as a rental or for resale, not lived in by the borrower. It has fewer than five units, so it is not multifamily.
- Call report: The financial report every bank and savings association files with its federal regulator each quarter, with a balance sheet, an income statement and schedules that break out loans by kind.
Sources
Plain definitions for orientation, not legal, tax or credit advice. A lender's own policy decides what it will do.