IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hka/wpaper/2014-023.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

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
    Note: MIP
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://humcap.uchicago.edu/RePEc/hka/wpaper/Bayer_Ferreira_Ross_2014_race-eth-mortgage.pdf
    File Function: First version, December 2014
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Agarwal, Sumit & Amromin, Gene & Ben-David, Itzhak & Chomsisengphet, Souphala & Evanoff, Douglas D., 2014. "Predatory lending and the subprime crisis," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 113(1), pages 29-52.
    2. Marsha J. Courchane & Brian J. Surette & Peter M. Zorn, 2004. "Subprime Borrowers: Mortgage Transitions and Outcomes," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 29(4), pages 365-392, December.
    3. Gerardi Kristopher & Willen Paul, 2009. "Subprime Mortgages, Foreclosures, and Urban Neighborhoods," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 9(3), pages 1-37, March.
    4. Yuliya Demyanyk & Otto Van Hemert, 2011. "Understanding the Subprime Mortgage Crisis," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 24(6), pages 1848-1880.
    5. Ross, Stephen L. & Turner, Margery Austin & Godfrey, Erin & Smith, Robin R., 2008. "Mortgage lending in Chicago and Los Angeles: A paired testing study of the pre-application process," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(3), pages 902-919, May.
    6. Black, Harold A. & Boehm, Thomas P. & DeGennaro, Ramon P., 2003. "Is there discrimination in mortgage pricing? The case of overages," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 27(6), pages 1139-1165, June.
    7. Munnell, Alicia H. & Geoffrey M. B. Tootell & Lynn E. Browne & James McEneaney, 1996. "Mortgage Lending in Boston: Interpreting HMDA Data," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 86(1), pages 25-53, March.
    8. James J. Heckman, 1998. "Detecting Discrimination," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(2), pages 101-116, Spring.
    9. Elizabeth Laderman & Carolina Reid, 2009. "The untold costs of subprime lending: examining the links among higher-priced lending, foreclosures and race in California," Community Development Working Paper 2009-09, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.
    10. Marsha J. Courchane, 2007. "The Pricing of Home Mortgage Loans to Minority Borrowers: How Much of the APR Differential Can We Explain?," Journal of Real Estate Research, American Real Estate Society, vol. 29(4), pages 399-440.
    11. Quercia, Roberto G. & McCarthy, George W. & Wachter, Susan M., 2003. "The impacts of affordable lending efforts on homeownership rates," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 29-59, March.
    12. Geoffrey M. B. Tootell, 1996. "Redlining in Boston: Do Mortgage Lenders Discriminate Against Neighborhoods?," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 111(4), pages 1049-1079.
    13. Stephen L. Ross & John Yinger, 2002. "The Color of Credit: Mortgage Discrimination, Research Methodology, and Fair-Lending Enforcement," MIT Press Books, The MIT Press, edition 1, volume 1, number 0262182289, December.
    14. Atif Mian & Amir Sufi, 2009. "The Consequences of Mortgage Credit Expansion: Evidence from the U.S. Mortgage Default Crisis," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 124(4), pages 1449-1496.
    15. Holmes, Andrew & Horvitz, Paul, 1994. "Mortgage Redlining: Race, Risk, and Demand," Journal of Finance, American Finance Association, vol. 49(1), pages 81-99, March.
    16. Robert B. Avery & Glenn B. Canner & Robert E. Cook, 2005. "New information reported under HMDA and its application in fair lending enforcement," Federal Reserve Bulletin, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.), vol. 91(Sum), pages 344-394.
    17. Paul S. Calem & Kevin Gillen & Susan Wachter, 2004. "The Neighborhood Distribution of Subprime Mortgage Lending," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 29(4), pages 393-410, December.
    18. Christopher Mayer & Karen Pence & Shane M. Sherlund, 2009. "The Rise in Mortgage Defaults," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 23(1), pages 27-50, Winter.
    19. Marsha Courchane & David Nickerson, 1997. "Discrimination Resulting from Overage Practices," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 11(1), pages 133-151, February.
    20. Bond, Philip & Musto, David K. & Yilmaz, Bilge, 2009. "Predatory mortgage lending," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(3), pages 412-427, December.
    21. Paul Calem & Jonathan Hershaff & Susan Wachter, 2004. "Neighborhood patterns of subprime lending: Evidence from disparate cities," Housing Policy Debate, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 15(3), pages 603-622.
    22. Neil Bhutta & Glenn B. Canner, 2013. "Mortgage Market Conditions and Borrower Outcomes: Evidence from the 2012 HMDA Data and Matched HMDA–Credit Record Data," Federal Reserve Bulletin, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System (U.S.), vol. 99(4), November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    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.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Patrick Bayer & Fernando Ferreira & Stephen L. Ross, 2018. "What Drives Racial and Ethnic Differences in High-Cost Mortgages? The Role of High-Risk Lenders," The Review of Financial Studies, Society for Financial Studies, vol. 31(1), pages 175-205.
    2. Stephen L. Ross, 2005. "The Continuing Practice and Impact of Discrimination," Working papers 2005-19, University of Connecticut, Department of Economics, revised Jul 2006.
    3. Marsha J. Courchane & Stephen L. Ross, 2019. "Evidence and Actions on Mortgage Market Disparities: Research, Fair Lending Enforcement, and Consumer Protection," Housing Policy Debate, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 29(5), pages 769-794, September.
    4. 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.
    5. James B. Kau & Lu Fang & Henry J. Munneke, 2019. "An Unintended Consequence of Mortgage Financing Regulation – a Racial Disparity," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 59(4), pages 549-588, November.
    6. Wheeler, Christopher H. & Olson, Luke M., 2015. "Racial differences in mortgage denials over the housing cycle: Evidence from U.S. metropolitan areas," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 33-49.
    7. Bin Wei & Feng Zhao, 2022. "Racial Disparities in Mortgage Lending: New Evidence Based on Processing Time," FRB Atlanta Working Paper 2022-1, Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta.
    8. Stephen L. Ross & Yuan Wang, 2022. "Mortgage Lenders and the Geographic Concentration of Foreclosures," Working Papers 2022-001, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    9. Arthur Acolin & Xudong An & Susan M. Wachter, 2022. "Lending competition, regulation, and nontraditional mortgages," Real Estate Economics, American Real Estate and Urban Economics Association, vol. 50(2), pages 340-365, June.
    10. Patrick Bayer & Fernando Ferreira & Stephen L. Ross, 2016. "The Vulnerability of Minority Homeowners in the Housing Boom and Bust," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 8(1), pages 1-27, February.
    11. 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.
    12. Yan Zhang, 2013. "Fair Lending Analysis of Mortgage Pricing: Does Underwriting Matter?," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 46(1), pages 131-151, January.
    13. Solomon Y. Deku & Alper Kara & Philip Molyneux, 2016. "Access to consumer credit in the UK," The European Journal of Finance, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 22(10), pages 941-964, August.
    14. Alper Kara & Philip Molyneux, 2017. "Household Access to Mortgages in the UK," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 52(3), pages 253-275, December.
    15. Tahsin, Salman, 2022. "Home price growth and minority access to mortgage credit," Journal of Economics and Business, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    16. 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.
    17. James Kau & Donald Keenan & Henry Munneke, 2012. "Racial Discrimination and Mortgage Lending," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 45(2), pages 289-304, August.
    18. Chan, Sewin & Gedal, Michael & Been, Vicki & Haughwout, Andrew, 2013. "The role of neighborhood characteristics in mortgage default risk: Evidence from New York City," Journal of Housing Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(2), pages 100-118.
    19. Coibion, Olivier & Gorodnichenko, Yuriy & Kudlyak, Marianna & Mondragon, John, 2014. "Does Greater Inequality Lead to More Household Borrowing? New Evidence from Household Data," IZA Discussion Papers 7910, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    20. Song Han, 2011. "Creditor Learning and Discrimination in Lending," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 40(1), pages 1-27, October.

    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

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hka:wpaper:2014-023. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Jennifer Pachon (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/mfichus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.