Housing Affordability Near Record Low Hits Black Buyers Particularly Hard
- Many Black buyers haven’t benefited from rising home equity
- Supply of new, affordable housing doesn’t match demand
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After years of mostly steady decline, the Black homeownership rate in the US saw its largest jump on record in the early days of the pandemic. Now, soaring borrowing costs and home prices threaten to erode those gains.
Black Americans — who for decades in the mid-20th century were shut out of swaths of the housing market by redlining and other racist practices — are disproportionately likely to be first-time buyers. And newcomers face a particular disadvantage in this market: They haven’t benefited from rising home equity, so they may need to come up with larger down payments.