Virginia Postrel, Columnist

How Dodd-Frank Locks Out the Least Affluent Homebuyers

Rules intended to protect borrowers and rein in fees have drained the profit from small-dollar mortgage lending. Who suffers? People who are straining to start building wealth.

November 9, 2021 at 11:30 AM UTC

Corrected

November 9, 2021 at 1:29 PM UTC

By Virginia Postrel

Virginia Postrel is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist. She is a visiting fellow at the Smith Institute for Political Economy and Philosophy at Chapman University and author, most recently, of “The Fabric of Civilization: How Textiles Made the World.”

Whodunit?
Photographer: Mark Ralston/AFP via Getty Images

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In Los Angeles, $80,000 is a 10% down payment on the county’s median priced home. In Winston-Salem, North Carolina, it buys a condominium or a fixer-upper in East Winston, the historically Black area east of Route 52.

Inexpensive properties like the ones in East Winston could serve as starter homes for people on their way up the housing ladder. They could provide a way to build family wealth from modest incomes. But they don’t.