Commercial Real Estate Has an Equity Problem
The same racial disparities that plague the housing market also affect the values of storefronts and offices.
A for-lease sign is displayed in San Francisco.
Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg
The racial homeownership gap has received considerable attention, and rightly so: At 42%, the Black homeownership rate is about 30 percentage points lower than that of whites. However, the gap in commercial-property ownership is just as disturbing. Only 3% of Black households own commercial real estate, compared with 8% of white households, and their holdings are much smaller — valued at just $3,600 on average, compared with nearly $34,000 for white households.
These alarming findings come from a Brookings Institution report on race and commercial real estate we released this week, part of a larger series examining wealth-building in Black communities.