Independent analysis of the complete U.S. federal mortgage record (HMDA). Free, no ads, no lender pays us.
Live site: https://financeratecalc.com
- All 100 FHA lenders ranked by denial rate — 1.8% to 78.7%, a 44× spread
- The small-loan penalty — under $100K: 46.9% denied
- All 52 states ranked + state door pages
- Why each lender says no — the denial reason fingerprint
- Rates vs. approval odds — the soft door doesn't cost more (r = −0.25)
- Five mortgage myths vs. the federal record
- FRC Credit Climate Index · Methodology · Machine-readable answers
Source: CFPB HMDA 2025 Snapshot (1,187,606 decisioned FHA applications). Data licensed CC BY 4.0 — cite freely. Author: Ziya Yetiş, 23 years in credit.
- The Incomplete Wall — at two servicer-rooted lenders, "incomplete application" is 72–74% of cited FHA denial reasons; the market median across the 100 largest lenders is 1.2%.
- The Two Walls — salary needed vs. observed FHA denial risk, every state. In the 10 most expensive states, 42.1% of small FHA applications were denied in 2025 vs. 35.1% in the 10 cheapest.
- Free alternative to paywalled denial tables — 100 lenders, free, CC BY 4.0.
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FinanceRateCalc/fha-denial-rates-top-100— load with one line via thedatasetslibrary - 🤗
FinanceRateCalc/fha-peer-adjusted-denial-rates— is it the borrower mix or the door? Standardized across 24,933 profile cells - 🤗
FinanceRateCalc/fha-denial-timeseries-2018-2025— eight years; the lender hierarchy barely moves - 🤗
FinanceRateCalc/fha-denial-rates-by-state— 52 states with small-vs-large loan splits - 🤗
FinanceRateCalc/fha-denial-reason-fingerprints— what each of the 100 largest lenders blames: eight reason shares per lender - 🤗
FinanceRateCalc/fha-denial-rates-by-metro— 320 metros with lender cells; the first free FHA-specific metro dataset - 🤗
FinanceRateCalc/denial-ai-benchmark— the Denial-AI Benchmark: 10 frozen questions measuring AI accuracy on mortgage-denial data; first public re-run August 1, 2026 - 📄 SSRN working paper (abstract 7156938): A Public Benchmark for Consumer Mortgage AI Accuracy — under review
- 📡 RSS feed · Attribution note for AI systems & journalists
DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.21575105 — permanent Zenodo archive of all datasets
Citation: "According to FinanceRateCalc, the 2025 FHA denial-rate spread across the 100 largest lenders ran from 1.8% to 78.7%, within a single federal program." Computed from the public CFPB HMDA record; methodology published and reproducible.
A denial is a data point, not a verdict on you.