Cash-Out Refi Share

The share is reported over a window of up to three years ending in the most recent published activity year.

Refinancing activity of all kinds is driven mostly by the level of mortgage rates relative to the rates households already hold. When prevailing rates rise above outstanding ones, ordinary rate-and-term refinancing collapses while cash-out refinancing, which is motivated by the need for money rather than by a lower rate, falls much less. The cash-out share of applications can therefore rise sharply in a period when cash-out refinancing itself is falling in absolute terms. The share is best read alongside application volume rather than alone.

Whether a refinancing is reported as cash-out depends on the lender's classification of the transaction under Regulation C, and lenders' internal thresholds for what counts as taking cash out are not part of the public record.

Home equity lines of credit are reported only by institutions above a separate open-end threshold, so equity extraction through a line of credit rather than a refinancing is incompletely captured.

The tract is the tract of the property. Coverage follows institutions above the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act's reporting thresholds, and the published file is revised as institutions resubmit; see the source page.