It's an anecdote that illustrates the 2020 data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act -something I've already cited. And as I also said, this is a well-documented issue.
C'mon, you are really grasping at straws now. I've already stipulated to the fact that some black applicants have lower credit scores, but overwhelmingly, that isn't the only discrepancy. Not that I expected you to be swayed by data or logic at this juncture, but just in case anyone else reads this later.
A recent Northwestern University study found that racial disparities in the mortgage market haven't declined much in the last four decades when it comes to discrimination in loan denial and interest rates. The study indicates that Black and Latino mortgage applicants are more likely to be declined than white applicants, and more likely to be offered high-cost loans if they're approved at all.
According to a report from the Urban Institute, as of 2017, there was a significant gap in homeownership rates between whites and Blacks — 72% of white Americans owned homes compared to 42% of Black Americans.
In fact, there has been negative progress on home ownership rates in the 52 years since the Fair Housing Act was passed in 1968. The gap between Black and white homeowners has widened, and Black Americans saw a more dramatic drop in homeownership rates after the recession than white Americans.
Lenders seem to have no problem just saying no. Nearly 1 in 10 borrowers get denied a mortgage, according to a 2019 LendingTree report. That report also found discrepancies by race and ethnicity: African American borrowers have the highest denial rates, at 17.4%, and non-Hispanic white Americans have the lowest, at 7.9%.
A recent analysis of nearly 7 million 30-year mortgages by University of California at Berkeley researchers found that black and Latino applicants were charged higher interest — an average of nearly 0.08% — and heavier refinance fees when compared with white borrowers. That was in face-to-face transactions. When applying online or through an app, minorities still ended up paying more, though terms were slightly better than when borrowing in person.
The upshot: Long-standing discrimination faced by people of color in getting a home loan can be reproduced in software-based lending, technology that advocates say is supposed to prevent bias.
This entire article is excellent and explains the problem in detail.
