The homeownership rate for Hispanics has increased more during the past several years than any race or ethnic group, including whites. The rate, which hit a 50-year low in 2015, has risen 3.3 percentage points since then, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. The overall U.S. homeownership rate bottomed in the second quarter of 2016 and has grown 1.3 percentage points since then.
While Hispanics comprise only 18% of the U.S. population, the group accounted for nearly 63% of new U.S. homeowner gains over the past decade, according to the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals. New homeowners include people buying first homes and those coming back into the market after a foreclosure.
Minorities bore the brunt of the 2008 housing bust and their return to homeownership has been mixed. African-American homeownership tumbled to an all-time low in the first quarter of this year.
Now, a growing population of young Latinos increasingly eager to buy homes offers fresh hope to a slowing housing market, where sales of existing homes have fallen on an annual basis for the past year.
Hispanics and blacks saw significant gains in homeownership during the housing bubble, aided by lenders that targeted minority buyers with risky loans that eventually led to wide-scale foreclosures. The Hispanic homeownership rate hit a high of more than 50%, before plummeting 6 percentage points over the next eight years, according to census data.
Houses in Hispanic communities were 2.5 times more likely to be foreclosed upon than homes in white communities between 2007 and 2015 while homes in black communities were twice as likely to be foreclosed on, according to an analysis by Zillow.
Many come from countries where credit and mortgages aren’t available so they are used to buying homes in cash. Ms. Boston will sometimes tell buyers to come back when they have been in the same job for two years so they can qualify for a mortgage.
Lenders are also targeting Hispanics. These borrowers took out 9.4% of mortgages in the U.S. last year, versus 5.8% at their recent low point in 2010, according to ComplianceTech’s LendingPatterns.com.
Eva Angelina Romero, a real-estate agent in Nashville, said that more small lenders are offering programs geared to Hispanic buyers. One uses a tax identification number instead of a social security number, which a buyer wouldn’t have if undocumented. She said that while most of her clients used to be non-Hispanic, now 80% are Latino.
Wave of Hispanic Buyers Boosts U.S. Housing Market
I bet the neighborhoods these hispanics are buying in are black neighborhoods