NSMO: National Survey of Mortgage Originations

NSMO (the National Survey of Mortgage Originations) is a recurring survey conducted jointly by the FHFA and the CFPB, and a component of the National Mortgage Database (NMDB). It draws a sample of newly originated, closed-end first-lien mortgages and asks borrowers about the shopping and search process, expectations, mortgage knowledge, and satisfaction, then links the survey responses to administrative credit-record and loan-servicing data in the NMDB. FHFA releases a public-use file (PUF). It is used in, for example, Bhutta, Hizmo & Ringo for borrower satisfaction and service quality (N=35,162), and Bhutta, Fuster & Hizmo for borrower sophistication, shopping behavior, and knowledge, merged with administrative credit and servicing data.

• Cost: free.
• Access: public-use file behind a terms-of-use click-through (no account or API key needed).
• Coverage: closed-end first-lien originations; survey waves from 2013 onward.
• Home: https://www.fhfa.gov/data/nsmo · PUF: https://www.fhfa.gov/data/nsmo/puf

Access

The PUF is downloadable from the FHFA NSMO PUF page (https://www.fhfa.gov/data/nsmo/puf) after accepting a terms-of-use agreement. No account and no API key are required. A codebook is also available on the same page.

The NSMO PUF page was confirmed live during this session, but the end-to-end file download was not exercised here (the file sits behind the terms-of-use click-through). The page’s verified status is therefore “Source reachable,” not “Fetched.”

For researchers with FHFA or CFPB affiliation, a restricted internal NMDB/NSMO file exists with un-masked, uncoarsened data. The papers linked above use that restricted version, not the PUF. See https://www.fhfa.gov/data/nmdb for access information on the restricted file.

Gotchas (the ones that bite pipelines)

• Survey weights are not optional. NSMO is a stratified sample of originations, not a census. Unweighted statistics are biased. Apply the provided survey weights for any population-level inference about borrowers or originations.
• PUF masking does not reproduce restricted-file results. The public-use file is coarsened relative to the internal restricted file: values are top-coded or binned, geography is suppressed or rounded, and some variables are omitted entirely. Results from PUF analysis will not exactly match papers (such as those above) that were built on the restricted NMDB/NSMO data.
• Self-report and non-response bias. The sophistication, knowledge, and satisfaction questions are self-reported. Non-response is non-random (more engaged or satisfied borrowers may respond at different rates), and recall bias affects questions about the origination process answered after closing.
• Originated loans only. Coverage is restricted to closed originations: denied applicants and non-applicants are not in scope. The dataset cannot speak to credit access at the extensive margin.
• Sample period depends on release vintage. Waves accumulate over time, so the usable sample period depends on which PUF release vintage you download. Check the release notes and state the vintage explicitly in any replication package.

Citation

Cite the FHFA/CFPB National Survey of Mortgage Originations, stating whether the public-use file or the restricted NMDB file was used, the wave(s) included, and that survey weights were applied. Example form: Federal Housing Finance Agency and Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, National Survey of Mortgage Originations, Public-Use File, waves YYYY-YYYY, retrieved from https://www.fhfa.gov/data/nsmo/puf, accessed YYYY-MM-DD; survey weights applied.