FinanceRateCalc
FRC Statistic · FRC-008 · 2025 federal record

Does the lender you choose matter more if you have a small down payment?

84%

Yes: at an 80-84% CLTV band (roughly 20% down) the denial spread between major FHA lenders averaged 16.3 percentage points, while at 90-94% CLTV (roughly 10% down, where the median first-time buyer lands per NAR) the spread widened to 78.7 points — making lender choice about 5x more consequential, per FinanceRateCalc (2026).

Provisional: this page's figure comes from CLTV-band spreads (decision-surface files not in this repository), which is not regenerated from a data file in the public repository; it has not been re-verified since 2026-07-21. Cite with that caveat. This page is regenerated from data or removed by 2026-10-22. Audit: eval/stat-audit.json.

Cite freely · CC BY 4.0

Source: CFPB HMDA 2025 (1,187,606 decisioned FHA applications), processed by FinanceRateCalc · methodology · all statistics

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