Volume 17, Issue 1

2006

 

 

We use a model based on the 1991–2001 American Housing Survey to determine whether differences in mortgage rates among whites, blacks, and Hispanics are due to differences in the property and loan characteristics of the borrowers themselves or to racial differences in how those characteristics are priced into rates. We separate loans into major market categories and present decompositions to assess the differences and distinguish between them.

 

Very little information on mortgage pricing has been generally available to researchers, and the literature that discusses what information there is has not used a scheme that allows rate differences to be classified by characteristics and pricing. We find that significant differentials are more likely in the conventional mortgage market. The largest occur among blacks, who pay a much higher annual percentage rate than whites for both purchases and refinancing. For government-insured loans, Hispanics do slightly better than whites.