Discrimination in Mortgage Lending
In recent years much attention has been devoted to the issue of racial discrimination in the home mortgage lending market. This interest has been fostered by the release of mortgage lending data under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act of 1977 (HMDA). This act, which required depository institutions to disclose mortgage originations in metropolitan areas by census tract, was amended in 1989 to require lenders to report the disposition of every mortgage loan application, along with the loan amount and the race or national origin and annual income of each applicant. Analysis of the raw data contained in the annual HMDA data releases shows that there are persistent disparities in denial rates between white and minority applicants.
