Home Mortgage Lending by the Numbers

During the past year, several Federal Reserve reports on home mortgage lending have attracted widespread attention for what they revealed about racial lending patterns. The Federal Reserve Board, in back to- back analyses of 1990 and 1991 data gathered nationwide, reported that black and Hispanic applicants are denied credit at roughly twice the rate of white applicants. And in a study designed to investigate the sources of differential mortgage denial rates in the Boston area, that region’s Reserve Bank concluded that lenders approved conventional home purchase loans for white applicants at a much greater rate than for black and Hispanic applicants who appeared, statistically at least, to be similarly qualified.