Author(s)
Patrick Bayer, Fernando Ferreira, Stephen L. Ross

This paper examines mortgage outcomes for a large, representative sample of individual home purchases and refinances linked to credit scores in seven major US markets in the recent housing boom and bust. We find that among those with similar credit scores, black and Hispanic homeowners had much higher rates of delinquency and default in the downturn. These differences are not explained by the likelihood of receiving a subprime loan or by differential exposure to local shocks in the housing and labor market and are especially pronounced for loans originated near the peak of the boom. There is also heterogeneity within minorities: black and Hispanics that live in areas with lower employment rates and that have high debt to income ratios are the driving force of the observed racial differences in foreclosures and delinquencies. Our findings suggest that those black and Hispanic homeowners drawn into the market near the peak were especially vulnerable to adverse economic shocks and raise serious concerns about homeownership as a mechanism for reducing racial disparities in wealth.

JEL Codes
I38: Welfare and Poverty: Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
J15: Economics of Minorities, Races, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
J71: Labor Discrimination
R21: Urban, Rural, Regional, Real Estate, and Transportation Economics: Housing Demand
Keywords
mortgage
foreclosure
deliquency
homeownership
minority