A new study by the Furman Center for Real Estate & Urban Policy finds that mortgages fell 14 percent last year, but impacted communities very differently. For black and Hispanic home buyers, the number of mortgages dipped 44% and 34% respectively, while mortgages for white buyers barely fell at all. Asian buyers, on the other hand, had six percent more loans. "As a result, the racial breakdown of home buyers in New York City changed significantly during the period studied, which predated the financial turmoil in the markets this year," writes the NY Times. The shift isn't entirely because of the sub-prime mortgage meltdown, says the NY Daily News (the Times says the opposite); prime loans have fallen for minority groups as well. The Times says one primary reason for the decline is fewer applications, but that's not city-wide: mortgages fell in every borough but Manhattan, where they increased 12%. Even so, we're doing better than the rest of the country, where mortgages dropped 25 percent on average.
Fewer Mortgages for Blacks and Hispanics [NY Times]
Minorities Hard Hit in Mortgage Crunch [NY Daily News]
Photo by wmliu.
