Report Claims Even Greater Disparities InMortgage Lending

WASHINGTON - (07/05/05) The National Community ReinvestmentCoalition has released a follow-up report to one done in April onthe 2004 Home Mortgage Disclosure Act data, and has found evengreater pricing disparities by race, income and gender. Thefollow-up report focused on first mortgage loans and subprimelending, and used a larger sample. The updated report shows that17.3% of the conventional loans (home purchase, refinance, and homeimprovement loans) received by Hispanics were subprime whereas11.1% of the loans received by Whites were subprime during 2004,compared with 15.3% reported in the earlier study. For minoritiesand immigrants, the price of first-time homeownership is likely tobe higher than for their white counterparts, with 28.7% of theconventional home mortgage loans issued to African Americans comingin as subprime in contrast to 7.8 percent for whites. Similarly,15.4% of Hispanic home loans were subprime and 12% of NativeAmerican home loans were subprime.