Rocket Mortgage hung onto its claim as the nation’s largest home lender in 2022 — by the skin of their teeth.
According to Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data collated by mortgage data firm iEmergent, Rocket originated $127.58 billion in home loans in 2022, edging rival United Wholesale Mortgage by about $63.5 million, less than a day’s worth of business.
The data, collected by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), includes one-to-four family, all occupancy, originated loans (first and second lien included). It does not include correspondent or multifamily loans.
Per the HMDA data, Rocket appears to have edged United Wholesale Mortgage (UWM) in volume because it offers home improvement loans, whereas UWM does not. According to iEmergent’s analysis, Rocket originated $1 billion in home improvement loans in 2022, which proved the difference.
But when looking solely at purchase and refinance mortgages, UWM bested Rocket in dollar volume, originating $127.51 billion compared to Rocket’s $124.33 billion. Rocket originated more mortgages overall, at 447,118 overall compared to UWM’s 348,415.
Wells Fargo placed third on the home lending leaderboard in terms of volume, producing $65.74 billion across 142,258 loans. (Bear in mind that the data does not include correspondent mortgage loans that Wells Fargo bought.) Rounding out the top five in terms of volume were JPMorgan Chase at $54.25 billion in production across 109,882 loans and Bank of America at $52.60 billion across 121,451 loans. LoanDepot originated $52.53 billion across 156,126 loans, per the HMDA data, good for sixth.
U.S. Bank, Fairway, First Republic Bank and CrossCountry rounded out the top 10 in terms of volume, according to the CFPB data.
However, it is worth noting that HMDA doesn’t classify lenders that have merged as one company. So, for example, Caliber Home Loans and NewRez are listed separately. Combined, they originated about $38 billion in home loans in 2022, which would have been good for 9th.
Guaranteed Rate itself produced $31 billion in loans in 2022, but if HMDA counted its joint ventures with real estate brokerages like Guaranteed Rate Affinity, it would have been in the top 10.
Here is the full top 25 list, organized by number of home loans made in 2022, courtesy of iEmergent. We’ll have additional data analysis in the coming week.
