Census Tracts for HMDA and CRA: Income Levels, 2026 Data and Lookups

A census tract is a small statistical subdivision of a county, drawn by the U.S. Census Bureau to hold between 1,200 and 8,000 people, ideally about 4,000. Lenders care because HMDA and CRA both record each loan's location by tract, and the tract's income level decides whether a loan counts as lending in a low- or moderate-income area.

First published December 15, 2021, when lenders were switching to the 2020 census tracts. Rewritten October 13, 2026 as a current explainer for HMDA and CRA reporting. The 2021 transition notes are kept at the end.

What counts as a census tract

The Census Bureau's geography glossary defines census tracts as "small, relatively permanent statistical subdivisions of a county or statistically equivalent entity." They generally hold 1,200 to 8,000 people, with an optimum of 4,000, so their physical size varies widely with how densely an area is settled. The boundaries are drawn to last, so that data can be compared from one census to the next, but tracts are occasionally split when population grows or merged when it falls. State and county lines are always tract boundaries.

On a HMDA record the tract is an eleven-digit number: the two-digit state code, the three-digit county code and the six-digit tract code. The FFIEC's 2026 Filing Instructions Guide checks that structure directly, as the edit list further down shows.

Where the tract goes on a HMDA or CRA record

Regulation C requires a HMDA reporter to record the property's state, county and census tract when the property is in an MSA or metropolitan division where the institution has a home or branch office. The tract is required only if the county had a population of more than 30,000 at the most recent decennial census (12 CFR 1003.4(a)(9)(ii)). Banks that also report CRA small business, small farm and community development data have to geocode properties outside those areas too (12 CFR 1003.4(e)).

On the CRA side, the data a reporting bank collects for small business and small farm loans includes "the loan location, including State, county, and census tract" (the FDIC's version is 12 CFR 345.42; the OCC and Federal Reserve rules in parts 25 and 228 match it). CRA geographic-distribution analysis is built on those tract assignments, so a loan put in the wrong tract can move from a moderate-income area into a middle-income one without anyone noticing.

How a tract's income level is classified

The CRA regulations sort tracts into four income levels by comparing the tract's median family income with the area median income. The definitions below are quoted from the "Income level" definition in 12 CFR 345.12 as published on eCFR on October 13, 2026. The OCC's 12 CFR 25.12 and the Federal Reserve's 12 CFR 228.12 use the same thresholds.

The area median income is the median family income of the MSA or metropolitan division the tract sits in, or the statewide nonmetropolitan median if the tract is outside an MSA (same section). The FFIEC computes the result as a tract income level indicator and publishes it with its census data. Its census data overview explains the codes in the last column and notes that "unknown" does not mean the percentage was skipped. It means the tract has no median family income to compare, which happens most often right after tract boundaries are redrawn.

To classify a tract yourself, enter its median family income percentage, or the tract and area figures in dollars, in our free CRA tract income level classifier. It applies the same thresholds and shows the rule beside the answer.

One detail catches people. The FFIEC publishes two different MSA-level incomes. The MSA/MD median family income behind the tract income level comes from the five-year American Community Survey and stays fixed between refreshes. The FFIEC Estimated Median Family Income is recalculated every year using HUD's method, and the FFIEC describes it as the figure "that corresponds to the year when loan application data are collected." If two reports disagree about an MSA's median income, check which of the two each one used.

Which tract boundaries and demographic data apply to 2026 reporting

All of the following comes from the FFIEC's census data overview, census FAQ and flat files page, read on October 13, 2026.

• Loans reported for 2022 onward use the 2020 decennial census tract boundaries. Starting in 2026 the FFIEC adopts the latest Census TIGER file each January, and in January 2026 it adopted the 2025 TIGER file.
• For tract income and demographics, the FFIEC refreshes most of its census data every five years, in years ending in 2 and 7. The 2022 refresh moved the source to the 2016 to 2020 five-year ACS, and the same ACS year stays in use until the next refresh. The overview names 2027 as the next one, so tract income levels set in 2022 can change for 2027 data even where no boundary moves.
• The FFIEC adopts OMB's latest MSA changes the following calendar year. OMB Bulletin 23-01 took effect in FFIEC data for loans collected on or after January 1, 2024. An MSA change moves the area median income, so it can change a tract's income level without touching the tract.
• The 2026 FFIEC Census flat file was posted July 9, 2026. The FFIEC says the file "is updated every summer, typically in July or August," and that the Geocoding and Mapping System gets boundary updates in January but its demographic data only after the flat file is released.

The practical consequence: between January and the summer release, a lookup can return a 2026 tract with demographics that have not yet been updated for 2026. If your exam work or CRA performance tables depend on tract income levels, re-run them once the year's flat file is out.

How to look up a tract for an address

For one address, the free public tool is the FFIEC Geocoding/Mapping System at geomap.ffiec.gov. You enter the address and the year, and it returns the state, county, tract and MSA codes along with the tract's income level and a subset of its demographics. According to the FFIEC's overview, it has run on Esri's ArcGIS World Geocoding Service since January 1, 2023, and it returns a tract only when the address is in Esri's database at street, point or subaddress level with a match score of 98 or higher. The FFIEC's FAQ says there is no batch option, and that the "Address type does not meet match criteria" message usually means new construction Esri has not added yet; the "User select tract" option lets you pick the tract by hand in the meantime. Our guide to the FFIEC Geocoding System covers what each field means and where it lands on the LAR, with eight real addresses run through it.

A whole loan file needs batch geocoding, and the addresses worth a second look are the ones engines disagree on. ZOOM Geocoder runs a hard-to-find address through up to eight geocoding sources and plots each result on one map over the tract boundaries, so you can see which tract each source landed in before you pick one. For tracts across a whole assessment area, shaded by income level, Comply Mapping draws them from the same FFIEC data.

Tract errors that trigger HMDA edits

The 2026 Filing Instructions Guide has five edits on property location that a bad tract can set off. The descriptions are paraphrased from the guide.

• V625: the census tract must be an eleven-digit number or NA, cannot be blank, and must be a valid tract number defined by the Census Bureau. A tract copied from an older boundary set is one way to fail it.
• V626: the county must be a five-digit FIPS code or NA, and cannot be blank.
• V627: when neither is NA, county and tract must be a valid combination, and the first five digits of the tract must match the county FIPS code. A tract pasted next to the wrong county fails here.
• V716: when neither is NA, the county must be in the reported state.
• Q603: a quality edit that flags a tract reported as NA when the county had more than 30,000 people at the most recent decennial census, which is the Regulation C threshold above.

Validity edits have to be fixed before the HMDA Platform will accept the file; a quality edit can be confirmed instead if the value is right. None of these edits can tell you whether a valid tract is the correct one for the address. A geocode that falls back to a ZIP code or street centroid still produces a well-formed tract that passes all five. For the rest of the edits that hold up filings, see how to fix the 10 most common HMDA edit check errors.

Background: how the 2020 tracts reached HMDA and CRA

The Census Bureau redraws tracts before each decennial census, and the HMDA and CRA data lag it. The 2020 tracts came into general use in 2021, but lenders kept reporting 2010 tracts for 2021 data and switched to the 2020 tracts for data collected in 2022. The CFPB's guidance on which boundaries to use for each of those years is summarized in our 2021 note on the CFPB's tract boundary guidance.

When this post first ran in December 2021, RATA's geocoders were already returning 2020 tracts, and for 2021 records we converted them back to the 2010 geography with a spatial join on each record's latitude and longitude. From January 1, 2022, records for the 2022 reporting year got 2020 geography directly, while records for earlier years kept the geography that applied to them. The Census Bureau released the 2020 mapping files in March 2021, and we converted them for Comply and our geocoding system ahead of the switch.

The demographic side took longer. We could not reproduce the FFIEC's own processing of the Census Bureau's datasets, so the 2022 demographics could only go live after the FFIEC released them. Until then we carried the 2021 figures forward, as we do every year until the summer file arrives. The FFIEC announced a staged release in March 2022, which we covered in the FFIEC's timeline for the 2022 census and demographic data. The next change of that kind is the five-year refresh, which the FFIEC's overview places in 2027.