CrossCountry Mortgage denies 6.37% of FHA applications. NewRez denies 53.27%. Same federal guidelines. Same borrower pool. A 47-point gap that most borrowers never see — until it's too late.
| Lender | FHA Denial Rate | vs National Avg | LSI |
|---|---|---|---|
| CrossCountry | 6.37% | −19.6pp | 6 Stable |
| Guild Mortgage | 7.14% | −18.9pp | 21 Stable |
| UWM | 21.58% | −4.4pp | 30 Reactive |
| Freedom Mortgage | 22.79% | −3.2pp | 50 Reactive |
| PennyMac | 23.64% | −2.4pp | 17 Stable |
| Rocket Mortgage | 30.46% | +4.5pp | 16 Stable |
| loanDepot | 34.94% | +8.9pp | 44 Reactive |
| Wells Fargo | 48.63% | +22.6pp | 29 Reactive |
| NewRez | 53.27% | +27.3pp | 57 High Risk |
Easiest states for FHA approval (2025): Utah (16.88%), Wyoming (16.84%), Idaho (17.51%), Nevada (17.63%), Texas (18.44%)
Hardest states for FHA approval (2025): DC (35.91%), Oklahoma (33.99%), Hawaii (34.91%), Iowa (31.98%), Arkansas (31.77%)
The gap between Utah (16.88%) and DC (35.91%) represents a 19-point difference — meaning the same borrower in DC faces nearly double the denial risk compared to Utah.
FRC Research introduced the Lender Stress Index (LSI) — measuring how much each lender restricts FHA approvals when market friction (OFI) rises. CrossCountry shows near-zero climate sensitivity (CSS) (LSI 6), while NewRez shows the highest sensitivity in the dataset (LSI 57), with denial rates spiking to 62% during the 2022 rate surge.
Data source: CFPB HMDA 2025 Public Dataset (ffiec.cfpb.gov). Filters: loan_type=2 (FHA), action_taken=1 (originated) or 3 (denied). 11 LEI codes representing major FHA lenders. 399,179 records processed. All rates calculated as: denied / (originated + denied). Minimum 10 records per cell for state-level analysis.
Educational purposes only. Not financial advice. Individual lender policies vary.
Full dataset and interactive tools available free at financeratecalc.com. Data citations welcome. Please link to source.
🔍 Also explore: All FRC Tools · Lender Comparison · FHA by State · Lender Stress Index
Prices and rates are widely reported. Whether a lender says yes is not. In the complete 2025 federal record, denial rates across the 100 largest FHA lenders ran from 1.8% to 78.7% — same programme, same year.
And it is not simply who applies where: standardizing on state, loan amount, income, debt-to-income and loan-to-value, applicant mix explains only a 2.7× range in expected outcomes.
CFPB HMDA 2025, computed by FinanceRateCalc. Covers the highest-volume lenders published per market, not all lenders. Historical observations, not predictions. CC BY 4.0, not independently reproduced.