During the pandemic, Black homeownership rates increased by 2 percentage points and Hispanic homeownership rates by 2.5 percentage points, while the white homeownership rate increased just 1 percentage point.
While the historically low mortgage rates enabled high-earning, highly educated borrowers across all racial and ethnic groups, it was especially instrumental in boosting homeownership rates among Black and Latino households, according to an analysis by Urban Institute.
From 2019 to 2021, the homeownership rate for Black households went up from 42% to 44%; for white households it went up from 72% to 73%; and for Hispanic households it climbed up from 48.1% to 50.6%.
In fact, after experiencing a continuous decline since the Great Recession, the Black homeownership rate finally made gains between 2019 and 2021.
But the current high mortgage rates and inflation threaten to reverse the trend, according to the analysis.
