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Race, Ethnicity and High Cost Mortgage Lending

Author

Listed:
  • Patrick Bayer

    (Duke University)

  • Francisco Ferreira
  • Stephen L. Ross

    (University of Connecticut)

Abstract

This paper examines how high cost mortgage lending varies by race and ethnicity. It uses a unique panel data that matches a representative sample of mortgages in seven large metropolitan markets between 2004 and 2008 to public records of housing transactions and proprietary credit reporting data. The results reveal a significantly higher incidence of high costs loans for African-American and Hispanic borrowers even after controlling for key mortgage risk factors: they have a 7.7 and 6.2 percentage-point-higher likelihood of a high cost loan, respectively, in the home purchase market relative to an overall incidence of 14.8 percent among all home purchase mortgages. Significant racial and ethnic differences are widespread throughout the market – they are present (i) in each metro area, (ii) across high and low risk borrowers, and (iii) regardless of the age of the borrower. These differences are reduced by 60 percent with the inclusion of lender fixed effects, implying that a significant portion of the estimated market-wide racial differences can be attributed to differential access to (or sorting across) mortgage lenders.

Suggested Citation

  • Patrick Bayer & Francisco Ferreira & Stephen L. Ross, 2014. "Race, Ethnicity and High Cost Mortgage Lending," Working Papers 2014-023, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    • Handle: RePEc:hka:wpaper:2014-023
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    References listed on IDEAS

    as
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    Cited by:

    1. Nolan Kopkin, 2018. "The conditional spatial correlations between racial prejudice and racial disparities in the market for home loans," Urban Studies, Urban Studies Journal Limited, vol. 55(16), pages 3596-3614, December.
    2. Paolo Emilio Mistrulli & Md Taslim Uddin & Alberto Zazzaro, 2023. "Discrimination of Immigrants in Mortgage Pricing and Approval: Evidence from Italy," CSEF Working Papers 675, Centre for Studies in Economics and Finance (CSEF), University of Naples, Italy.
    3. Manthos D. Delis & Panagiotis Papadopoulos, 2019. "Mortgage Lending Discrimination Across the U.S.: New Methodology and New Evidence," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 56(3), pages 341-368, December.
    4. Steven Ongena & Alexander Popov, 2016. "Gender Bias and Credit Access," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 48(8), pages 1691-1724, December.
    5. Corrado Giulietti & Mirco Tonin & Michael Vlassopoulos, 2015. "Racial Discrimination in Local Public Services: A Field Experiment in the US," CESifo Working Paper Series 5537, CESifo.
    6. Chan, Sewin & Haughwout, Andrew & Tracy, Joseph, 2015. "How Mortgage Finance Affects the Urban Landscape," Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, in: Gilles Duranton & J. V. Henderson & William C. Strange (ed.), Handbook of Regional and Urban Economics, edition 1, volume 5, chapter 0, pages 987-1045, Elsevier.
    7. Natee Amornsiripanitch, 2023. "The Age Gap in Mortgage Access," Working Papers 23-03, Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia.
    8. Matthias Stefan & Felix Holzmeister & Alexander Müllauer & Michael Kirchler, 2018. "Ethnical discrimination in Europe: Field evidence from the finance industry," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 13(1), pages 1-7, January.
    9. Ping Cheng & Zhenguo Lin & Yingchun Liu, 2015. "Racial Discrepancy in Mortgage Interest Rates," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 51(1), pages 101-120, July.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    mortgage; cost of credit; race; ethnicity; subprime; credit score; neighborhood;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
    • I28 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Government Policy
    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J71 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Hiring and Firing
    • R21 - Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics - - Household Analysis - - - Housing Demand

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