Minorities in the Washington region may have made large gains in homeownership since 2000, but those numbers were likely even higher a few years ago, according to a Pew Research Center report. From 1995 through the mid-2000s, homeownership rates rose more rapidly among all minorities than among whites, according to the report, released in 2009. However, blacks and Hispanics were more likely to be targeted for the subprime loans that contributed to the housing market’s eventual plunge, meaning their homeownership was more tenuous than others’.
“[In 2009], the homeownership rate for black households decreased 1.9 percentage points, from 49.4 percent to 47.5 percent, reversing four years of gains,” the report said.
For Hispanic Americans, the rate peaked in 2005 at 56.2 percent. But by 2008, the group had lost 2.6 percentage points in just three years.
White homeownership peaked in 2005 at 76.1 percent and lost 1.2 percentage points over the following three years.
Immigrant households, however, were not hit as hard as their ownership rate fell by less than a half percent in the recession, the report said. Although the counties with higher shares of immigrant residents had elevated rates of foreclosure, that is likely because the construction boom attracted the population, the report said.
“Thus, the presence of immigrants in a county may simply signal the effects of a boom-and-bust cycle that has raised foreclosure rates for all residents in that county,” the report said.
