Keep historical evidence historical
HMDA fields describe reported applications and outcomes from a past activity year. We do not turn them into approval predictions or live-rate claims.
Trust is part of the product
Useful data needs visible boundaries.
MortgagesVine is being built to make public mortgage evidence easier to use without making the data say more than it can support.
Publication commitments
These rules apply before page quality, search traffic, or revenue considerations.
Compare like with like
Meaningful comparisons align period, geography, loan purpose, loan type, property context, and reporting coverage before showing a difference.
Protect people in the data
We publish aggregates, suppress unstable small cells, and never attempt to identify applicants or create individual application pages.
Separate identity from similarity
Lenders, brands, parents, brokers, servicers, and complaint-company names are distinct until a human-reviewed relationship establishes otherwise.
Evidence pipeline
From source release to public page
- 1Preserve
Store source fields, release identity, and activity year.
- 2Normalize
Resolve lender-year and geography identities without erasing history.
- 3Aggregate
Build documented cohorts and apply minimum-count gates.
- 4Explain
Publish counts, denominators, definitions, and limitations together.
Denial-reason method
Reported reasons stay tied to their denominator
County denial-reason analysis uses public HMDA loan-level CSV rows for action codes 3 and 7. A reason is counted at most once per application, even if repeated across the four published reason fields. Each share is divided by all denied decisions; totals can exceed 100% because one decision may include multiple reasons. Counts below 20 are suppressed, and missing reasons are never inferred.