According to the Detroit Free Press, even though whites only account for 10% of Detroit’s population, they landed almost half of the home mortgage loans made in 2017 for which the race of the applicant was known. Overall data collected under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act show a mortgage market in Detroit that is struggling and in some areas of the city, completely nonexistent.
Other key takeaways include:
White borrowers got almost the same number of mortgages as black borrowers despite being a much smaller percentage of the city population. Of 1,072 mortgage loans made in Detroit in 2017, the most recent year for which full data are available, 442 went to white borrowers, 461 to black borrowers, and in the remainder the race of the applicant was not known, or, in a few cases, went to Asians or those of other ethnic groups.
The mortgage market doesn’t exist or barely exists in more than half the city. Of 297 Census tracts in Detroit, each tract measuring several square blocks, 139 tracts saw no mortgages at all in 2017, and another 91 saw just one to five mortgages.
Only nine Census tracts out of the nearly 300 saw 20 or more mortgage loans made in 2017. Tracts where mortgages were more readily available were in the city’s more upscale districts, including the east riverfront, the Palmer Woods area, and a handful of others. In those areas, poverty rates are well below the city’s average and income levels are higher.
Read More
