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FRC Intelligence · CFPB HMDA 2025

Can I get a loan?
Honest answer: nobody can tell you in advance.
Here is what they check instead.

The one thing the federal record proves: approval is not a fact about you — it is a fact about you and a door. In 2025, FHA denial rates across the 100 largest lenders ran from 1.8% to 78.7% — a 44× spread inside a single federal program. The same file gets different answers at different doors. Anyone — a website, a quiz, an AI — who scores your answers and pronounces "you will be approved" or "you will be rejected" is guessing. We don't do that here. We show you the record.

The eight things every underwriter checks

1. Employment stability. Two years of consistent, documentable employment is the standard reference point; gaps and job-type changes get scrutiny, not automatic rejection.Observed: "employment history" appears among cited FHA denial reasons at materially different rates per lender — see the reason fingerprints →
2. Income — level and paperwork. Underwriters care as much about how provable your income is as how big it is. Self-employed and commission income need longer paper trails.
3. Debt-to-income ratio (DTI). The most-quoted rule is 43%. The observed record disagrees: FHA originations happen well above it, and the practical wall sits near 50.Observed: the DTI curve and the real wall — the DTI report →
4. Payment history. Recent late payments, collections, bankruptcy and foreclosure seasoning periods are the hardest-coded part of underwriting — and also the most lender-variable in practice.
5. Credit profile. FHA minimums are famously low on paper (580 for 3.5% down); lender overlays raise them in practice, and the overlay is different at every door.
6. Cash reserves. Months of payments in the bank after closing. Not always required, always noticed.
7. Loan size vs. property (LTV) — and the loan amount itself. Small loans are denied far more often: 46.9% under $100K vs 18.5% over $400K nationally in 2025.Observed: the small-loan penalty, state by state — loan-size data →
8. Property type. Condos and manufactured homes carry extra project-level checks — and the door matters most here: manufactured-home FHA denial ran 38.7% at one major lender vs 6.9% at another in 2025.

So what should you actually do?

Skip the fortune-tellers. Look at how real doors treated real files in the federal record, then pick your door with open eyes — and if you've already been denied, decode the reason before you reapply.

See how 100 lenders actually decided → Already denied? The Denial Map → Compare doors on the record (free) →
Source: CFPB HMDA 2025 Snapshot (1,217,297 decisioned FHA applications), processed by FinanceRateCalc. Historical data observation — not financial, legal, or mortgage advice, and not a prediction of any individual outcome. FRC publishes no individual approval predictions. Free, no ads, no lender pays us. CC BY 4.0.