As of the fourth quarter of 2007, 74.9% of white non-Hispanic families but only 48.5% of Hispanic families owned homes. We argue that low rates of homeownership in Hispanic communities create a self-reinforcing mechanism that contributes to this large disparity. In part, this occurs because proximity to other homeowners belonging to a family's social network improves access to information about how to become a homeowner. Role model effects may also be relevant. We investigate these issues using household-level data on out-of-state movers from the 2000 Decennial Census. Three especially important results are obtained. First, proximity to Hispanic homeowners in the 1995 place of residence increases the propensity of a Hispanic family to own a home in 2000. Second, that effect is especially strong with respect to proximity to weak English-speaking Hispanic homeowners. Third, these patterns hold regardless of the Hispanic family's own ability to speak English. From a policy perspective, these results suggest that local programs designed to promote homeownership among weak English-speaking Hispanic families likely increase Hispanic homeownership beyond just the immediate program participants. Copyright (c) 2009 American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version under "Related research" (further below) or search for a different version of it.
Publisher Info
Article provided by American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association in its journal Real Estate Economics.
References listed on IDEAS Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.: