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Average Mortgage Loan Size by State (2024 HMDA)

U.S. states show a 3.8x spread in average mortgage loan size, from $173K (Mississippi) to $649K (District of Columbia). SSR-driven analysis from CFPB HMDA 2024.

Research question

How does the average mortgage loan size vary by U.S. state, and what does the observed spread reveal about regional housing-cost differences in the CFPB HMDA 2024 dataset? Understanding the per-state distribution of average loan amount matters for borrowers (jumbo versus conforming product selection, fee-conscious shopping leverage), for lenders (geographic risk modeling and pricing tier construction), and for housing-policy analysis (regional cost-of-living measurement via mortgage demand as a proxy). We answer it by computing the mean originated loan amount per state across all 12,229,298 applications in our database and comparing extremes to the national volume-weighted reference.

Method

For each of 54 reporting states, we computed the mean originated loan amount across all HMDA applications in 2024 that were reported with action-taken code 1 (originated) per the FFIEC HMDA codebook. The national reference is $312,937, computed across the full population of 12,229,298 applications submitted by 4,908 reporting institutions. We then ranked states by average loan size and surfaced the 10 highest and 10 lowest states. Aggregations were computed at HMDA ETL time at the state level via the avg_loan_amount column in our states table; loan-level values reflect the loan_amount field as reported by the CFPB, which is rounded to the nearest $5,000 to protect borrower privacy under CFPB privacy disclosure rules. We do not weight averages by lender or by demographic segment; the per-state mean is a simple arithmetic mean of all originated loan amounts. Methodology details are documented on our methodology page.

Top 10 states by highest average loan size

# State Avg loan size Originated
1 District of Columbia $648,816 8,399
2 Hawaii $568,960 16,087
3 California $507,281 509,170
4 New York $458,435 208,787
5 Washington $423,489 153,279
6 Massachusetts $411,786 119,508
7 Guam $406,592 112
8 Colorado $393,172 143,013
9 New Jersey $369,966 156,392
10 Georgia $359,934 227,610

Top 10 states by lowest average loan size

# State Avg loan size Originated
1 Mississippi $172,586 49,565
2 Puerto Rico $177,573 12,640
3 West Virginia $180,868 27,168
4 Iowa $181,161 67,724
5 Michigan $194,086 203,987
6 Arkansas $201,501 59,041
7 Ohio $203,792 246,113
8 Kentucky $204,990 89,008
9 Indiana $205,459 162,462
10 Louisiana $208,314 62,347

Findings

The national average mortgage loan size was $312,937 in 2024, computed across 12,229,298 originated applications reported by 4,908 institutions under HMDA. State-level average loan sizes ranged from $172,586 in Mississippi to $648,816 in District of Columbia — a spread of 3.76 times between the lowest and highest reporting states. This dispersion is substantially wider than the equivalent dispersion in denial rates or origination volumes per capita, indicating that housing-cost geography is the primary axis of variation in mortgage market behavior across U.S. regions.

The unweighted state-level mean is $296,045; the national volume-weighted average is $312,937. The gap between these two measures arises because large-population states (California, Texas, Florida, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois) contribute disproportionate application counts to the volume-weighted figure. California, with high median home values and large mortgage market volume, pulls the national volume-weighted average upward materially. Researchers comparing US mortgage averages against international or historical benchmarks should specify which average they are quoting.

Average mortgage loan size tracks median home value closely: the highest-loan states cluster around expensive coastal and high-cost-of-living markets (California, Hawaii, Massachusetts, District of Columbia, Washington State), while the lowest-loan states correspond to lower-cost rural and southern markets (West Virginia, Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kentucky). The 3.8x spread between extremes reflects the underlying housing-market dispersion captured by HMDA loan amounts, not a difference in borrower wealth, credit access, or income distribution per se. Within-state dispersion is also substantial, particularly in California and New York where coastal metros exceed inland metros by 2-3 times in median home value.

For consumers, this matters for two practical reasons. First, the conforming loan limit set annually by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) effectively bifurcates the mortgage market: states near or above the limit see materially more jumbo originations, which carry different pricing tiers, underwriting overlays, and product availability. As of the 2025 limit ($806,500 for one-unit properties in most areas, with higher limits in designated high-cost counties), borrowers in DC, parts of California, parts of New York, and Hawaii face meaningfully different shopping conditions than borrowers in conforming-loan states. Second, fixed origination fees and closing costs represent a smaller fraction of total loan cost in high-loan-size states, which subtly favors larger national originators in those markets; borrowers in low-loan-size states benefit more from fee-conscious shopping among credit unions and community banks where flat-fee structures matter relatively more. Cross-references: browse all 54 reporting states for the live state-level table, and our rate-shopping guide for borrower-facing context.

Limitations

HMDA reports loan amounts rounded to the nearest $5,000 for privacy protection, so state-level averages are not exact down-to-the-dollar values; the practical impact on a state-level average computed over thousands of applications is small (typically under 1%) but worth disclosing. The reported average is a simple mean and does not reflect the underlying distribution — states with heavy bimodality (luxury coastal markets combined with affordable inland counties, e.g., California, Washington, New York) will show a state-level average that does not match the typical borrower experience in either submarket. State-level aggregates also include applications across all loan purposes (purchase, refinance, home improvement, cash-out refinance); each purpose has materially different typical loan sizes, and the ratio of purchase to refinance applications varies year to year as interest rates change. Cross-year comparisons should account for this purpose-mix shift before drawing conclusions about housing-cost inflation. Finally, several U.S. territories with small populations are present in HMDA but represent very few originations; the per-state average is sensitive to small-sample variation in those territories and should be interpreted directionally rather than literally.

Sources

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