20.8% of home purchase mortgages taken out by investors in 2025 were interest-only, compared with 1.6% of loans to people buying a home to live in, according to our analysis of Home Mortgage Disclosure Act records. That was 63,642 investor loans out of 305,422. Second-home buyers were in between, at 6.2%.
Among states with at least 500 investor purchase loans, the interest-only share was highest in New Jersey (29.4%), California (29.3%) and Missouri (27.9%), and lowest in Vermont (7.1%).
What these loans are
With an interest-only mortgage, the borrower pays only interest for a set period, often 5 to 10 years, so the balance does not fall. Payments then rise when principal repayment begins. Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and FHA do not buy or insure interest-only loans, so these loans are made outside those programs.
"Investor" is HMDA’s occupancy category for a property that is not the borrower’s principal or second residence, typically a rental. The figures cover originated home purchase loans secured by a first lien, excluding reverse mortgages and open-end lines of credit. Loans where the lender did not report the interest-only feature (mostly exempt lenders) are left out of both the count and the total. A state with few investor loans can show a large swing from a handful of lenders, so we show the loan counts.
By state
| State | Investor loans | Interest-only share, investor | Interest-only share, second home | Interest-only share, owner-occupied |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| District of Columbia | 494 | 34.4% | 7.2% | 1.3% |
| New Jersey | 10,424 | 29.4% | 9.9% | 1.2% |
| California | 29,632 | 29.3% | 7.4% | 1.3% |
| Missouri | 7,172 | 27.9% | 1.7% | 1.0% |
| Massachusetts | 5,569 | 25.7% | 9.1% | 1.5% |
| Connecticut | 3,478 | 25.7% | 10.3% | 2.1% |
| Arkansas | 4,249 | 24.9% | 1.4% | 1.5% |
| Hawaii | 1,630 | 24.1% | 8.6% | 0.9% |
| Alabama | 5,009 | 23.8% | 3.2% | 1.5% |
| Washington | 5,573 | 22.5% | 7.2% | 1.9% |
| Kansas | 2,649 | 22.4% | 1.1% | 1.1% |
| Mississippi | 2,429 | 22.4% | 1.4% | 2.4% |
| Virginia | 7,456 | 22.4% | 4.7% | 1.2% |
| Maryland | 5,263 | 22.4% | 3.7% | 0.9% |
| Nevada | 3,742 | 22.1% | 3.0% | 0.6% |
| Georgia | 10,654 | 21.9% | 5.5% | 1.5% |
| Indiana | 5,861 | 21.7% | 4.7% | 1.7% |
| Ohio | 12,409 | 21.6% | 3.5% | 2.2% |
| Illinois | 10,351 | 21.4% | 2.7% | 0.7% |
| Oklahoma | 4,772 | 20.9% | 1.5% | 1.0% |
| Pennsylvania | 12,648 | 20.1% | 6.0% | 2.0% |
| Delaware | 1,061 | 19.7% | 3.3% | 1.1% |
| Kentucky | 3,412 | 19.5% | 4.4% | 2.6% |
| Louisiana | 2,514 | 19.2% | 2.5% | 1.1% |
| Tennessee | 7,743 | 19.1% | 8.1% | 2.4% |
| Michigan | 6,912 | 19.1% | 6.8% | 2.6% |
| Florida | 30,786 | 19.0% | 5.3% | 1.7% |
| Rhode Island | 855 | 18.9% | 7.1% | 1.4% |
| Nebraska | 1,792 | 18.9% | 3.0% | 1.4% |
| New York | 13,418 | 18.8% | 13.5% | 2.4% |
| South Carolina | 5,397 | 18.7% | 6.3% | 2.6% |
| North Carolina | 13,752 | 18.5% | 9.1% | 2.8% |
| Minnesota | 2,981 | 18.1% | 2.4% | 0.9% |
| Colorado | 4,829 | 17.2% | 7.4% | 0.9% |
| Texas | 28,253 | 17.0% | 4.2% | 1.2% |
| North Dakota | 534 | 16.7% | 3.4% | 0.7% |
| Wisconsin | 4,731 | 16.0% | 6.6% | 2.5% |
| Wyoming | 409 | 15.4% | 13.1% | 1.5% |
| South Dakota | 645 | 15.2% | 5.6% | 1.4% |
| Oregon | 2,832 | 15.0% | 6.0% | 1.5% |
| Alaska | 410 | 14.6% | 0.6% | 0.1% |
| New Hampshire | 978 | 13.4% | 5.1% | 1.9% |
| Arizona | 6,649 | 13.2% | 3.2% | 0.8% |
| New Mexico | 1,136 | 13.1% | 2.1% | 0.6% |
| Iowa | 2,478 | 13.0% | 9.4% | 0.7% |
| Montana | 833 | 11.9% | 11.7% | 2.3% |
| Maine | 1,021 | 11.3% | 7.1% | 3.8% |
| West Virginia | 1,137 | 11.3% | 2.9% | 2.0% |
| Idaho | 1,972 | 8.9% | 9.4% | 1.3% |
| Utah | 2,986 | 8.7% | 10.6% | 1.1% |
| Vermont | 507 | 7.1% | 7.4% | 2.0% |
| Puerto Rico | 760 | 0.9% | 0.3% | 0.4% |
50 states, D.C. and Puerto Rico, sorted by the investor interest-only share. The CSV includes the loan counts behind every share and a national row.
Source
Consumer Financial Protection Bureau and Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council, Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) 2025 Snapshot National Loan-Level Dataset, downloaded from the HMDA Data Browser on October 27, 2026. U.S. government data in the public domain. HMDA covers most, but not all, U.S. mortgage lenders; small and rural lenders are partly exempt. Shares, medians and counts on this page are our calculations from the loan-level records. Our table is available under CC BY 4.0. Credit "My Credit Guide (mycreditguide.org)".
Steven Reynolds, "Interest-Only Mortgages by State," My Credit Guide, October 27, 2026, https://mycreditguide.org/data/interest-only-mortgages-by-state/.