What Happened to Black Home-Ownership? #realestate #wealth #asset

Source:  Mortgage News Daily

Home-ownership by black Americans has "declined to levels not seen since the 1960s when private race-based discrimination was legal."  Like most demographic groups, black Americans saw homeownership gains evaporate during the housing crisis, but that community was hit harder than other groups and have not benefited as fully from the recovery.

The authors of a new Urban Institute blog research piece say that, in the three decades following passage of the Fair Housing Act, black homeownership rose by almost 6 percentage points, reaching 47.3 percent, but from 2000 to 2015 the rate dropped to 41.2 percent.  This happened through forces both within and beyond the housing market.

Black home-buyers bought homes at the peak of the bubble at higher rates than whites and Asians and often did so using subprime loans even though they qualified for prime loans.  Two percentage points of the 6 percentage point slide happened from 2000 to 2010, the remainder happened in the following five years, three of them while the recovery was underway.  White and Hispanic home-ownership dropped less from 2000 to 2015, and home-ownership rose for people in other racial groups (mainly Asian Americans).

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