| Government Releases Mortgage Info For 2002
Minorities make gains in home ownership August 6,2003 By ANNE LINEBERRY |
| Data recently released by a government agency reflects a rise in homeownership among all ethnic groups.
The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council released information about mortgage loan borrowers using 7,771 financial institutions across the country. All the institutions are covered by the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act. Thirty-one million loans and applications were reported, the council said, for 2002. This number is 13 percent higher than 2001. Refinancings increased 22 percent, according to the data. African-Americans and whites showed modest gains in home purchase loans – two and three percent respectively – the statement said. Other groups showed much more growth, with the increase in purchase loans 11 percent for Hispanics, 13 percent for Asians and 23 percent for Native Americans, according to the council. Denial rates fell for the fourth straight year, the statement said. It said in 2002, 26 percent of African-Americans were denied conventional home purchase loans. Native Americans fared almost as poorly, at 23 percent. Following were Hispanics, denied at a rate of 18 percent, while the rate for white applicants was 12 percent and for Asians, 10 percent. The Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN), issued a statement concerning the data, pointing out that though progress is being made in home ownership, the disparities in loan denials show that racial issues are still a factor in the lending industry and need to be rectified. “There’s a long list of problems…the main point is that these disparities are enormous…they cannot possibly be explained away by reasonable factors” said ACORN’s communications coordinator David Swanson. The Federal Financial Institutions Examination Council is a “formal interagency body empowered to prescribe uniform principles, standards, and report forms for the federal examination of financial institutions by the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, the National Credit Union Administration, the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, and the Office of Thrift Supervision and to make recommendations to promote uniformity in the supervision of financial institutions.” |
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Anne Lineberry is MortgageDaily.com‘s editor. She previously worked as an online editor/producer for DallasNews.com and on the Metropolitan desk for the print edition of The Dallas Morning News. Email Anne at AnneLineberry@MortgageDaily.com |
