Precision down to the census tract gives lenders a dependable edge for staffing, expansion and marketing decisions well before final HMDA data arrives
DES MOINES, Iowa /CitizenWire/ -- iEmergent, a forecasting and advisory services firm for the financial services, mortgage and real estate industries, today released a new analysis validating its 2025 forecasts against actual Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data. The analysis, which uses final 2025 HMDA data released by the Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council on June 23, 2026, spans every geographic level from national down to individual census tracts, showing the strength of iEmergent's bottom-up forecasting approach.
The accuracy of iEmergent's 2025 purchase loan forecasts for the nation's top 30 largest metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs) averaged well above 90% when compared against 2025 HMDA actuals. That figure reflects absolute forecast accuracy, which cannot exceed 100%.
Looking at per-tract loan error by individual census tract, iEmergent's 2025 forecast was within 10 loans of actual volume in more than 64.3% of the nation's 84,414 census tracts. Widening that margin to 15 loans, the forecast was accurate for 78.6% of all tracts.
"Lenders need a dependable line of sight into where mortgage opportunity is forming, market by market - not months after the fact, once HMDA data finally confirms it, but early enough to guide decisions on staffing, branch locations, marketing spend and growth strategy for the year ahead," iEmergent CEO Laird Nossuli said. "That's exactly what iEmergent's proprietary, bottom-up model is built to deliver."
iEmergent also validated the accuracy of its forecasts against actual HMDA data at the borrower race and ethnicity level. Segment-level accuracy is calculated as the ratio of forecast to actual loan volume, which reflects both the size and direction of the forecast error. A figure above 100% indicates the forecast slightly exceeded actual volume; a figure below 100% indicates it fell short. For 2025, the company's fourth-quarter 2024 forecast produced the following national-level accuracy rates by borrower segment:
* Asian borrowers: 107.3% accuracy
* Black borrowers: 96.3% accuracy
* Hispanic borrowers: 90.5% accuracy
* Native American and Pacific Islander borrowers: 83.8% accuracy
* Non-Hispanic white borrowers: 89.4% accuracy
iEmergent's forecasts are built on two core concepts: the Purchase Mortgage Generation Rate, which measures the rate at which an individual market produces purchase mortgages, and the Homebuyer Pool, the number of households ready, willing and able to buy a home in a given year. Together, these replace traditional top-down, supply-side forecasting models with a demand-driven approach rooted in how households actually behave. A full overview of iEmergent's forecasting methodology is available at https://www.iemergent.com/insights/mortgage-opportunity-forecasting.
ABOUT IEMERGENT
Founded in 2000, iEmergent provides mortgage lending forecasts and analytics to the lending, housing and real estate industries. The company offers an extensive variety of forecast and market intelligence products, including Mortgage MarketSmart, a visualization tool that helps lenders quantify how mortgage markets will change. For more information, visit https://www.iemergent.com.
Learn More: https://www.iemergent.com
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