NBC29Lending Discrimination in Charlottesville

Lending Discrimination in Charlottesville

Reported by David Douglas
July 12, 2007

If you're black and live in Charlottesville, you're in the worst place in the country when it comes to getting a fair deal on a home loan.

A new study from Washington's National Community Reinvestment Coalition finds that 43 percent of all home loans offered to African Americans were high cost loans. That figure is compared to just 11 percent of the same type of loan offered to whites. It's the case regardless of income.

The NCRC says the biggest problem is predatory lending targeted at minority groups. In addition to the paper study, the group did mystery shopping. Sending a black buyer and a white buyer with similar credentials into the same brokerage firm, only for the white buyer to come back with the better offer.

"It was so amazing. 50 percent of the time, even though these are people with almost identical qualities, even though we skewed it in favor of the black person with higher income, higher credit scores, 50 percent of the time--the white was offered a better product," said John Taylor, President and CEO of NCRC.

Taylor says laws are needed to better protect consumers from predatory lending.