Search Results
Conference Paper
Race, redlining, and residential mortgage loan performance
Working Paper
Housing appraisals and redlining
Working Paper
Can studies of application denials and mortgage defaults uncover taste-based discrimination?
Several articles in the popular press have asserted that a simple comparison of average mortgage default rates for white and minority applicants is necessary and sufficient to uncover discrimination in mortgage lending. The fallacy of this assertion has been examined in Peterson (1981), Tootell (1993), and Yinger (1993). These papers show that a failure to account for the financial characteristics of each application or loan makes a simple comparison of average rates meaningless. However, recent empirical work on discrimination in mortgage lending has examined both application denial and ...
Journal Article
Mortgage lending in Boston: a response to the critics
Three years ago, the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston released an examination of racial patterns in mortgage denial rates in the Boston area. The study was motivated by newly available data on mortgage applications, showing that black and Hispanic applicants were two to three times as likely to be turned down for mortgages as white applicants. The study gathered all the variables thought to be missing from the HMDA analysis, such as the applicants' debt burdens and credit histories, to see whether these economic factors explained the racial difference in denial rates. Although the additional ...
Journal Article
Who has the authority to regulate predatory lending?
An investigation of who has the authority to address predatory lending in the Fourth Federal Reserve District. Regulatory agencies, including the Federal Reserve, are concerned about abusive lending practices that may be corroding some of the positive impacts of CRA-related lending in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods over the last decade.
Journal Article
Measuring pricing bias in mortgages
Detecting and measuring discrimination in the pricing of mortgage loans present unique challenges for bank regulators. This Commentary outlines how loans are priced in the mortgage market and the difficulties involved in comparing the prices charged to different borrowers.
Working Paper
Underserved mortgage markets: evidence from HMDA data
A baseline evaluation of the variation in mortgage credit flows across different types of neighborhoods using HMDA data collected in 1990 and 1991.
Working Paper
Accounting for racial differences in housing credit markets
A documentation of racial and neighborhood differences in home mortgage denial rates using data collected under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act, exploring the extent to which objective lending criteria are responsible for observed differences. The authors find persistent variations in denial rates between white and minority applicants, but emphasize that the HMDA data do not contain enough relevant information to draw any firm conclusions regarding causation.