Figuring out how much mortgage money Native people got in the nation’s biggest state takes some doing, because of the way the federal government classifies people.

According to the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, “American Indian” (which includes Alaska Natives) is a race, while “Hispanic” is an ethnicity. So there are Indians with Hispanic ethnicity and Indians without.

Adding these two categories together (and including a third category for Indians of unknown ethnicity), Indians received $1.6 billion in mortgage finance in the Golden State in 2015.

Not surprisingly for a state where Indians and Hispanics have co-existed for hundreds of years, California Indians with Hispanic ethnicity got the most mortgage money, $818 million, while those without it received $739 million in home loan finance. An additional $40 million or so went to Indians of unknown ethnicity.

Three of the top five lenders to California Indians with and without Hispanic ethnicity were banks, while two were non-banks.

Wells Fargo Bank, Raleigh, North Carolina was the largest, according to HMDA figures obtained from the LendingPatterns database of ComplianceTech, a fair lending and technology firm in McLean, Virginia. Wells extended $164 million in mortgages, more than 10 percent of the total.

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It was followed by loanDepot.com, Foothills Ranch, California at $125 million; Quicken Loans, Livonia, Michigan, at $93 million; Bank of America, also Raleigh, at $92.7 million, and JPMorgan Chase Bank, New York, at $74 million.

In all, 393 lenders made mortgages to California Indians, the HMDA data show.

The average home loan for a first mortgage in high-priced California was $290,000, while second mortgages averaged $56,000.

The “spread” charged to Indians (the difference between the percentage on their mortgage and the price the banks pay for money) was 2.2 percent for a first mortgage and 5.1 percent for a second mortgage. However, only about five percent of the loan spreads were reported.

More than half the money (58 percent) went to upper-income California Natives, while 22 percent was extended to middle-income borrowers, and just 11.8 percent to the low- and moderate-income categories combined.

The majority of borrowers used the money to refinance their homes (58 percent), while 39 percent bought new or existing homes with it. The balance, 3.3 percent, went for home improvement loans.

Government-backed loans (through the Federal Housing Administration and Veterans Administration) comprised a third of the lending, with non-government loans taking up the other two thirds.

The male/female borrower split came to 80 percent of dollars granted to applications with at least one male, and 20 percent to female-only or two-female applications.

About 80 percent of the loans were sold to investors in the secondary mortgage market, including non-agency investors and mortgage agencies Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Ginnie Mae. About 20 percent was not sold, and remained in lenders’ portfolios.

Not surprisingly in such a high-priced real estate market, bigger loans had a significant share of the market. Almost 30 percent were “jumbo” mortgages, meaning they were larger than the $417,000 limit mandated by the federal agencies.