Government-Backed Loan Share
The share of home-purchase mortgages insured or guaranteed by a federal programme rather than conventional.
The share of home-purchase mortgages originated in a tract that were insured or guaranteed by a federal programme rather than conventional.
Lenders report a loan type on every record. Regulation C requires them to record "whether the covered loan is, or in the case of an application would have been, insured by the Federal Housing Administration, guaranteed by the Department of Veterans Affairs, or guaranteed by the Rural Housing Service or the Farm Service Agency" (12 CFR 1003.4). This metric groups those three against the fourth category, conventional lending, which the register defines as "not insured or guaranteed by FHA, VA, RHS, or FSA" (FFIEC LAR data fields).
These programmes exist to reach borrowers conventional underwriting serves poorly: FHA loans permit small down payments, VA loans serve veterans and service members, and the RHS and FSA programmes are limited to rural areas. A tract's government-backed share therefore says something about the financing its buyers rely on.
Metrics in this family#
Considerations#
The share is reported over a window of up to three years ending in the most recent published activity year.
The three programmes have different eligibility rules and different geographies, and this metric does not separate them. A high share driven by VA lending near a military installation and a high share driven by FHA lending in a first-time-buyer market are not the same thing, and cannot be told apart here.
Programme shares also move with market conditions rather than only with local characteristics. FHA's share of purchase lending nationally rises when conventional credit tightens and falls when it loosens, so comparisons across years partly reflect the national cycle.
Cash purchases are not in the register, so this is a share of mortgaged purchases only.
The tract is the tract of the property. In tracts with few purchase loans the share rests on a small number of transactions. 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.
References#
- 112 CFR 1003.4https://www.consumerfinance.gov/rules-policy/regulations/1003/4/
- 2FFIEC LAR data fieldshttps://ffiec.cfpb.gov/documentation/publications/loan-level-datasets/lar-data-fields