FinanceRateCalc publisher kit · one finding · CC BY 4.0

Cleveland, OH: FHA denials by lender, 2025

What this file is: the finished piece a housing newsletter, a local reporter or a teacher can put on a page in two minutes. The widget below is live (it reads a static JSON file; no cookies, no tracking). The sentence under it carries a receipt a reader can verify later. Nothing here asks the reader to come to us.

1. What your readers will see

2. The code to paste

Paste where the piece should appear. The widget reads your page's background and adapts; add data-theme="dark" or "light" to force it. Licence: CC BY 4.0 — keep appropriate attribution to FinanceRateCalc, a link to the licence, and indicate any changes; the attribution line the widget renders is the simplest way to do this.

<!-- FinanceRateCalc: FHA denials by lender, Cleveland OH, 2025 (CFPB HMDA public record). CC BY 4.0. -->
<div data-frc="metro" data-value="cleveland-oh"></div>
<script src="https://financeratecalc.com/embed/frc.js" async></script>
<p style="font-size:13px"><strong>Finding.</strong> Within the 2025 Cleveland, OH metro record, observed FHA denial rates among high-volume lenders ranged from 6.4% to 80.1% — a gap of 73.7 ⟦FRC:metro-gap-cleveland-oh-2025:73.7pp:369427ab:c2610⟧ percentage points. Observed rates, unadjusted for applicant mix; lenders with at least 100 decisioned FHA applications in the metro. Source: <a href="https://financeratecalc.com/metro/cleveland-oh.html">FinanceRateCalc, CFPB HMDA 2025</a> · <a href="https://frc-mcp.ziyetis.workers.dev/verify?r=%E2%9F%A6FRC%3Ametro-gap-cleveland-oh-2025%3A73.7pp%3A369427ab%3Ac2610%E2%9F%A7">verify this figure</a></p>

Copy code

3. Scope, in plain words (keep these if you rewrite the sentence)

Period	2025, the complete public HMDA record for the year
Program	FHA forward mortgages only (loan_type 2); not conventional, VA or USDA, not reverse mortgages
Universe	lenders with at least 100 decisioned FHA applications in the Cleveland, OH metro (MSA 17410); five lenders qualify
Nature	observed denial rates, unadjusted for applicant mix; the gap is a derived statistic, not a field in raw HMDA
Does not establish	that the gap is caused by lender policy alone; misconduct by any named lender; the expected outcome for any individual applicant; that the gap applies to other metros or years

4. The receipt and how a reader checks it

The string beside the number — ⟦FRC:metro-gap-cleveland-oh-2025:73.7pp:369427ab:c2610⟧ — is a serial number for this figure. Anyone can paste it into the verify link: current means this receipt matches the verification object FinanceRateCalc currently publishes for this one figure (the 73.7-point gap); stale routes to the correction. It does not validate every figure in the widget: the widget reads the live JSON, the paragraph is fixed text. The receipt was issued 2026-10-12 from the cite card (channel c). Before you publish, do two things: click the verify link once, and check that the spread the widget shows still reads 73.7 points, so the paragraph and the widget agree.

5. Data and method, for the footnote

Data	api/metro/cleveland-oh.json (what the widget reads) · claim passport · use contract
Method	methodology · denial rate = denied ÷ (originated + approved-not-accepted + denied)
Page	financeratecalc.com/metro/cleveland-oh.html
Corrections	public corrections log; a corrected figure makes the receipt above read "stale"
Licence	CC BY 4.0: use, adapt, republish; give appropriate attribution, link the licence, indicate changes
Other formats	cite card (text, Markdown, HTML, BibTeX) · research-note example (one command, three files)

Other metros

The same tag works for 319 metros: change data-value to the slug from api/index.json. The sentence and receipt for another metro come from its cite card (cite.html?id=metro-gap-<slug>-2025); 184 metro gap claims are published. A metro below 500 decisioned applications is withheld rather than shown on thin counts.

Independent status, stated plainly: this is an independent re-aggregation of the public CFPB HMDA record, not an official CFPB or FFIEC output; the method is published and the figures are reproducible from the record, and no figure has yet been independently reproduced.