Who Actually Gets a Mortgage

Every other housing number on this site describes what homes cost. This one describes who got approved and who was turned down. Under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, every lender above a size threshold reports every application, and the CFPB publishes it at the record level — no key, no signup, no per-record charge. A market can be cheap and still be closed to you.

Originations, 20256,807,732$2.40T lent across 51 states
National denial rate23.4%2,081,146 applications denied by the lender
Average loan$352,861originated amount ÷ originations

Find your county

A state number is an average of places that do not resemble each other. Type a county or a state and see what lenders actually did there.

3,129 counties and 51 states. Counties with fewer than 50 ruled-on applications are listed without a rate — at that size a handful of files moves it several points.

The spread is the story

A lender said no to 30.2% of the applications it ruled on in Mississippi, and 14.1% in North Dakota — a 16.1-point gap between two states in the same national credit market, in the same year, under the same federal rules. Denial rate is not a house-price story. It tracks income, existing debt, property condition and the mix of lenders operating locally, which is why it moves independently of everything else on this site.

Hardest states to get approved

  1. Mississippi30.2%
  2. Louisiana29.9%
  3. Florida28.6%
  4. Hawaii28.3%
  5. West Virginia27.9%
  6. Alabama26.4%
  7. Georgia26.2%
  8. Texas26.2%
  9. New Mexico25.9%
  10. Maryland25.2%

Easiest states to get approved

  1. North Dakota14.1%
  2. Nebraska15.7%
  3. Iowa15.8%
  4. South Dakota16.2%
  5. Minnesota17.0%
  6. Wisconsin17.1%
  7. Vermont18.6%
  8. Idaho18.7%
  9. Alaska18.8%
  10. Kansas19.1%

Largest average loan

  1. District of Columbia$752,391
  2. Hawaii$603,187
  3. California$602,406
  4. New York$500,269
  5. Massachusetts$473,997
  6. Washington$461,879
  7. Colorado$437,262
  8. New Jersey$424,371
  9. Montana$392,556
  10. Utah$382,433

Most concentrated lending

Share of all originations held by the five largest lenders. High concentration means fewer places to shop a marginal file.

  1. Alaska36.2%
  2. Vermont35.2%
  3. Utah32.8%
  4. Hawaii32.5%
  5. Idaho30.3%
  6. Rhode Island30.2%
  7. North Dakota29.4%
  8. Iowa27.9%
  9. Montana27.8%
  10. Michigan27.0%

All states, ranked by denial rate

Purchase share separates markets where lending is dominated by people buying homes from markets running on refinancing and cash-out. Lender count is how many institutions reported at least one application in the state — a rough proxy for how many doors you can knock on.

#StateDenial RateOriginationsVolumeAvg LoanPurchase ShareLendersTop-5 Share
1 Mississippi 30.2% 54,718 $11.0B $200,188 55% 684 25%
2 Louisiana 29.9% 69,272 $16.3B $235,957 60% 714 21%
3 Florida 28.6% 491,046 $183.5B $373,739 60% 1,969 21%
4 Hawaii 28.3% 19,858 $12.0B $603,187 50% 322 33%
5 West Virginia 27.9% 29,629 $6.1B $207,272 58% 568 24%
6 Alabama 26.4% 115,118 $28.3B $245,790 55% 979 21%
7 Georgia 26.2% 242,931 $79.7B $328,249 53% 1,186 20%
8 Texas 26.2% 526,689 $186.2B $353,588 68% 1,536 20%
9 New Mexico 25.9% 39,313 $12.3B $313,896 58% 599 22%
10 Maryland 25.2% 126,664 $45.0B $355,240 50% 804 22%
11 New York 24.9% 232,239 $116.2B $500,269 52% 734 23%
12 District of Columbia 24.5% 9,300 $7.0B $752,391 59% 477 22%
13 Kentucky 24.5% 100,653 $23.7B $235,608 51% 850 20%
14 South Carolina 24.4% 143,083 $45.6B $318,805 60% 1,138 20%
15 Arkansas 24.2% 66,490 $18.1B $272,752 58% 801 22%
16 Oklahoma 24.2% 79,051 $18.6B $235,491 60% 815 19%
17 New Jersey 24.1% 178,220 $75.6B $424,371 46% 868 20%
18 North Carolina 23.8% 281,159 $89.6B $318,627 53% 1,242 24%
19 Rhode Island 23.8% 26,004 $9.0B $346,989 41% 454 30%
20 California 23.7% 572,268 $344.7B $602,406 45% 1,122 23%
21 Michigan 23.6% 229,505 $57.2B $249,095 47% 966 27%
22 Delaware 23.5% 27,033 $8.1B $297,803 52% 549 20%
23 Nevada 23.2% 69,682 $26.6B $381,858 55% 625 23%
24 Pennsylvania 23.1% 272,809 $65.9B $241,625 45% 1,101 19%
25 Ohio 22.8% 277,933 $63.7B $229,280 48% 1,080 24%
26 Tennessee 22.8% 176,247 $56.8B $322,100 52% 1,259 19%
27 Illinois 22.6% 232,591 $70.0B $300,865 54% 1,138 21%
28 Connecticut 22.4% 74,717 $27.0B $361,741 48% 683 19%
29 Arizona 21.4% 183,878 $69.0B $375,254 52% 1,066 25%
30 New Hampshire 21.1% 35,609 $12.6B $354,698 43% 542 27%
31 Virginia 21.1% 203,054 $77.6B $382,118 51% 1,004 22%
32 Indiana 21.0% 178,349 $43.2B $242,490 49% 1,020 16%
33 Maine 20.8% 35,498 $10.3B $291,538 46% 536 24%
34 Colorado 20.7% 156,418 $68.4B $437,262 52% 1,101 23%
35 Massachusetts 20.6% 135,614 $64.3B $473,997 46% 788 22%
36 Washington 20.4% 175,441 $81.0B $461,879 49% 812 23%
37 Wyoming 20.3% 13,328 $4.2B $312,372 55% 414 24%
38 Oregon 20.2% 89,385 $32.8B $367,263 49% 700 22%
39 Utah 20.1% 95,957 $36.7B $382,433 46% 580 33%
40 Missouri 19.4% 146,780 $36.0B $244,962 54% 1,013 19%
41 Montana 19.3% 23,001 $9.0B $392,556 51% 553 28%
42 Kansas 19.1% 60,511 $15.2B $250,620 55% 761 18%
43 Alaska 18.8% 11,907 $4.0B $339,537 64% 255 36%
44 Idaho 18.7% 56,607 $18.5B $326,740 52% 594 30%
45 Vermont 18.6% 13,418 $3.7B $277,539 48% 325 35%
46 Wisconsin 17.1% 154,669 $38.4B $248,244 43% 930 22%
47 Minnesota 17.0% 122,789 $36.6B $297,953 56% 866 21%
48 South Dakota 16.2% 17,111 $4.8B $281,591 58% 393 25%
49 Iowa 15.8% 75,933 $16.2B $213,952 55% 739 28%
50 Nebraska 15.7% 43,920 $11.5B $262,177 56% 558 24%
51 North Dakota 14.1% 14,333 $4.0B $276,680 58% 329 29%

Method, and one number that is easy to misread

  • Denial rate counts only applications a lender actually ruled on. HMDA action codes 1 (originated) and 3 (denied). Withdrawn applications and files closed for incompleteness are excluded from both the numerator and the denominator. Folding those in would inflate the figure and blame lenders for borrower-side outcomes — several published "denial rate" tables do exactly that, which is why our numbers run lower than theirs.
  • State and county grain, not neighbourhood. HMDA carries census tract on every record, so tract-level analysis is possible from the same free endpoint — it is simply not what this page does. The record-level CSV export returns the full 99-column schema including rate spread, total loan costs, discount points, LTV, DTI and applicant income.
  • Volume is originated dollars, not property value. A high average loan reflects both expensive housing and larger down payments being unavailable.
  • Two counties have no average loan, on purpose. A small number of HMDA records are commercial-scale loans filed against an ordinary residential county, and no filter the API offers separates them — the worst offenders are tagged as single-unit properties. In the 2025 data, one record accounts for roughly nine-tenths of its county's entire reported volume, which drags that county's average loan to several times the local median while leaving the denial rate untouched. Where the average exceeds three times a county's own median sale price and $600,000, we publish no average rather than a number that describes one filing. Counts, and therefore every denial rate on this page, are unaffected.
  • Small counties show no rate. Below 50 ruled-on applications a handful of files moves the rate by several points, so those counties report loan counts only.
  • Coverage threshold. Institutions below the reporting threshold do not appear. In rural states with many small lenders this understates true lender count.
  • National figures are summed from the 51 state pulls. The API rejects a request with no geography filter, so there is no single "national" call to make.

Source: CFPB HMDA data browser (2025 filing year, pulled 2026-08-23). Platform code: cfpb/hmda-platform. Public domain (CC0). See also the interactive map for the denial-rate layer, and all data sources.