what is the home mortgage disclosure act hmda 
the home mortgage disclosure act hmda is a federal law that requires mortgage lenders to keep records of key pieces of information regarding their lending practices lenders must submit these records to regulatory authorities established in 1975 the hmda was implemented by the federal reserve through regulation c 1 in 2011 the rule writing authority of regulation c was transferred to the consumer financial protection bureau cfpb 2understanding the home mortgage disclosure act hmda the home mortgage disclosure act was passed by congress in 1975 and went into effect under the fed s regulation c it was developed to address concerns and monitor the geographic targets of mortgage lenders by providing a way to identify predatory or discriminatory lending practices and to report statistics on the mortgage market to the government 1in 1980 the federal financial institutions examination council ffiec was given the responsibility of facilitating public access to mortgage information from financial institutions in accordance with the hmda 3 amendments were made to the act following the passage of the dodd frank wall street reform and consumer protection act which included the requirement of additional data points and the transfer of responsibility from the fed to the cfpb 1the entire home mortgage disclosure act can be found in title 12 chapter 29 of the united states code 4 regulation c is also an important component of the act regulation c was created by the federal reserve to overlay the requirements of the act and designate certain additional requirements that banks must follow the hmda asks lenders to identify the sex race and income of those applying for or obtaining mortgages but the data is anonymized in record keeping government agencies consumer groups and bank examiners use the data to determine compliance with various federal fair housing and credit laws including the equal credit opportunity act the fair housing act the community reinvestment act cra and state laws 5the hmda also helps support government sponsored community investment initiatives by providing a means for analyzing the allocation of resources 5hmda reportingin april 2020 the cfpb issued a final rule raising the data reporting thresholds for collecting and reporting data about closed end mortgage loans under the hmda from 25 to 100 loans effective july 1 2020 6in accordance with the hmda lenders must submit the following data lenders must submit a reason why a loan was denied 7under hmda and regulation c certain mortgage lenders are required to maintain records of specified mortgage lending information for reporting purposes in 2021 4 338 lenders reported 15 million loan originations under the hmda 8hmda reporting allows regulators to analyze information on mortgage loans and mortgage lending trends in a number of categories such as the number of pre approvals made the number of mortgages granted loan amounts and the purposes of individual loans the federal reporting also greatly details the approvals of various types of government sponsored loans including the federal housing administration fha farm service agency rural housing services and veterans affairs loans while these statistics are of natural interest to potential borrowers they can also be an important research tool for investors researching banking and lending stocks by comparing the most recent few years statistics an investor can easily identify whether or not a lender is growing its core business federal regulation c requires lenders to prominently display a poster in every branch office lobby that provides information on requesting their unique hmda statistics 9 these statistics can also be viewed by the public online for free at the cfpb data repository 