How rate spread is defined

For each originated loan (and each application approved but not accepted), a HMDA reporter records the rate spread: the difference between the loan's annual percentage rate and the average prime offer rate for a comparable transaction as of the date the interest rate was set, in percentage points. Nationally in 2024 the median spread on originated loans was 0.3 points and 15.6% of originations were at 1.5 points or more.

Average prime offer rate

The FFIEC publishes weekly tables of the average prime offer rate (APOR) for fixed- and adjustable-rate mortgages of each term, derived from a survey of rates offered to well-qualified borrowers. A spread of zero means the loan's APR equalled that benchmark; a negative spread means it was below it, which happens with lender credits, buydowns and some government programmes.

Higher-priced thresholds

Regulation C requires the spread to be reported for every covered loan since 2018. Regulation Z separately defines a higher-priced mortgage loan as one whose APR exceeds APOR by 1.5 points or more for a first lien (2.5 for a jumbo first lien, 3.5 for a subordinate lien). This site shows the share of a lender's, county's or state's originations at 1.5 points or more as a single distribution measure across all liens; it is not a count of loans that meet the regulatory definition, which depends on lien status and loan size.

What a spread reflects

APR includes points and fees as well as the note rate, so the spread reflects pricing, product (FHA and VA loans carry insurance and funding fees that raise APR), loan size (small loans have higher APRs for the same fees), credit risk and the timing of the rate lock against the weekly APOR. A higher median spread for a lender can come from any of these; the file does not separate them.

How this site computes it

Originated loans with a numeric spread are counted into 0.05-point bins from −3 to +8 points. The median and quartiles are read from those bins, and the distribution shown on county pages groups them as below 0, 0 to 0.5, 0.5 to 1, 1 to 1.5, 1.5 to 3 and 3 or more. Cells with fewer than 25 such loans are withheld. See the methodology.