Every major FHA lender has a zone where applications simply do not survive — 97%+ denial, cell after cell. We mapped all six from 1,187,606 loan-level records. And then we mapped the way out.
Get the report — $49 →Rocket Mortgage’s 2025 decision surface. The gold-ringed cells are the black hole: DTI 48–50 × CLTV 90–95, 97.6% denial across 84 applications. Every lender chapter looks like this — the full grid, the hole, and the numbers.
| CLTV\DTI | 36 | 37 | 38 | 39 | 40 | 41 | 42 | 43 | 44 | 45 | 46 | 47 | 48 | 49 |
| 97+ | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| 95-96 | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – |
| 90-94 | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 94 | – | 96 | – | – | – |
| 85-89 | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | – | 50 | – | – | – | – | – |
| 80-84 | 24 | 26 | 27 | 22 | 17 | 21 | 15 | 25 | 11 | 35 | – | – | – | 28 |
| 70-79 | 13 | 11 | 12 | 13 | 13 | 11 | 11 | 10 | 4 | 15 | 12 | 9 | 10 | 8 |
For every black hole, the report shows how the same DTI × CLTV zone was treated by the other five lenders. In Rocket’s hole, Mr. Cooper’s 2025 denial rate was 7.8%. Same borrowers on paper. Different gravity. The report closes with a full 6×6 cross-matrix — every hole, every lender, one page.
Built by FinanceRateCalc. Every number traceable to public CFPB data.
Download the Black Hole Report →Informational purposes only — historical HMDA patterns, not financial advice and not a prediction for any individual application. Consult a licensed mortgage professional. FRC analyses exclude all protected-class variables.
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.