Sifter

The Home Mortage Disclosure Act, which was enacted in 1975 to make sure lenders are serving communities’ housing needs, requires banks that give home loans to annually report whom they accepted and whom they turned down. (There are 125 institutions with branch offices here.) The data are sorted in a variety of ways, such as by gender, income, census tract number and requested loan amount. This is for conventional home-purchase loans; go to www.ffiec.gov/hmda/ to see categories such as refinancing and home improvement loan requests.

Applicant stats - apps received v. denied* - percentage denied
American Indian 16 to 1 .6%

Asian/Pacific Islander 68 to 4 6%

Hispanic† 168 to 34 20%

Black 19 to 4 21%

White 3248 to 302 9%

White applying w/minority 111 to 18 16%

race not available 532 to 112 21%

income less than 50% local median 126 to 41 33%

income 50-79% of median 404 to 58 14%

income 80-99% of median 453 to 64 14%

income 100-119% of median 525 to 63 12%

income 120% or more of median 2514 to 222 9%

* Some of those that weren’t denied withdrew from consideration or didn’t accept the offer.

† For Hispanics, many of whom culturally deal in cash, 38% of the denials were due to credit history problems. For whites, it was credit history (25%) or debt-to-income ratio (23%).