About Fat Boy Data
Fat Boy Data is an independent research project that reads federal mortgage filings and reports what lenders actually did with them, market by market.
What we do
Every year, lenders covered by the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act file one record for every mortgage application they decide: the amount, the purpose, whether the property is owner occupied, and whether they approved it. That data is public, and almost nobody reads it.
We read all of it. For 2023–2025 that is millions of applications across 616 counties, joined to the FDIC and NCUA branch registries so you can see which lenders are actually reachable from where you live.
What we are not
We are not a lender, a mortgage broker, or a financial adviser. We do not originate, arrange, or service loans, and nothing here is an offer of credit or a recommendation to use any particular lender.
An approval rate is a record, not a prediction. It measures who applied in an area and how they were treated. Credit decisions turn on the borrower — income, credit history, debt-to-income, loan-to-value. No figure on this site tells you what any lender would do with your application.
How it is funded
The data is free to read. When you unlock a market we ask for an email address, and we may share your interest with mortgage providers who pay to reach people shopping in that market. That is the business model, it is the only one, and it is described in full in our privacy policy before you enter anything.
Independence
No lender pays for placement, ranking, or removal. Rankings come from the federal filings and the rules on our methodology page, which are applied the same way to every institution. If a lender appears at the top it is because of what it filed.
Get in touch
Questions, corrections, or a data request: hello@fatboydata.com. If you believe a figure is wrong, tell us which page and which lender and we will check it against the source filings.