The most recent Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data released illustrate the great changes that have impacted the U.S. housing market. Stories covering housing and the subprime mortgage crisis have been hot since the bubble began to burst. What's going on in your community? Use this data to find trends and stories about the state of the housing market in your neck of the woods. For calendar year 2006 more than 34 million loan records were reported in HMDA. That number dropped by about half, to approximately 17 million loan records in the 2008 calendar year. There were 26.6 million loan records for 2007. Has the drop been as significant in your region? How does it compare to other areas of the state? The nation? HMDA data are rich with details including gender, ethnicity and income of loan applicants. Find out the type of loans that have been applied for and, if denied, the reasons provided by the lending institution. Get your hands on HMDA data for your community online or by contacting the Database Library at 573-884-7711. The database is available for the entire nation or a single state. For tips on using this data to uncover timely stories in your coverage area, check out the housing and real estate categories in Extra!Extra! & the IRE Resource Center story archive. The Resource Center also offers tipsheets that deal with using HMDA data. Recent tipsheets include No. 3296 and No. 3090 offering tips on how to cover subprime loans and the bailout. Don't have the time or CAR skills necessary to analyze the HMDA data? The Database Library can provide custom analysis for you. Just shoot a note to datalib@ire.org. To find CAR training or discover how to bring it to you go to ire.org/training.