Why HELOCs Get Denied, by State, 2025: Denial Reasons in HMDA Loan-Level Data

This note reports the reasons lenders gave for denying home equity line of credit (HELOC) and closed-end home equity loan applications in the United States in 2025, from the public Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) 2025 Snapshot loan-level data released by the FFIEC and CFPB. Lenders denied 601,027 of 1,829,336 decided HELOC applications (32.9%). Of the 600,948 denials with a reason, 47.3% cited debt-to-income ratio, 34.8% credit history and 18.4% collateral, and 23.5% cited more than one reason. Debt-to-income ratio was the most-cited reason in 37 states and the District of Columbia; credit history led in 8 states, with the highest share in Mississippi (53.3%). Collateral ranged from 13.1% of denials in Virginia to 27.4% in Wyoming. Home equity loans were denied at 34.0%, and incomplete applications were cited in 21.4% of those denials. An independent script recomputed every figure from the raw rows, and state tables and rankings accompany this note as CSV files. Live study page with interactive tables: https://lendermatch.io/data/heloc-denial-reasons/ (companion study: https://lendermatch.io/data/heloc-approval-rates/) Data source: HMDA 2025 Snapshot National Loan-Level Dataset (FFIEC and CFPB), nationwide loan-level CSV from the FFIEC HMDA Data Browser API: https://ffiec.cfpb.gov/v2/data-browser-api/view/nationwide/csv?years=2025&actions_taken=1,2,3&loan_purposes=2,31,32,4,5 (retrieved October 22, 2026). Method: principal residence, consumer purpose, 1 to 4 units, not reverse; loan purposes home improvement, refinance, cash-out refinance, other and not applicable. HELOC = open-end line of credit; home equity loan = closed-end subordinate lien. A reason counts once per denial if it appears in any of the four HMDA denial reason fields; shares are of denials with at least one reason. States need at least 300 denials with a reason to be ranked. Files: paper.pdf (research note with method, tables, verification and limitations); denial reasons by state for HELOCs and home equity loans (CSV); state rankings (CSV); DATA-DICTIONARY.md. Published by LenderMatch (lendermatch.io), a brand of LMK Media.