ComplianceTech, an Arlington, Va.-based provider of technology and mortgage data analysis, has released results of a study that it says shows a significant decrease in home mortgages to blacks and Latinos in comparison to non-Hispanic whites since the onset of the housing downturn.

The analysis of data collected under the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) showed that blacks and Latinos borrowed 62 percent less to buy or refinance homes in 2009 than they did in 2004, before the housing market collapsed. Mortgages to whites, meanwhile, declined just 17 percent.

"This is the first comprehensive research on the distribution of prime, subprime, and Federal Housing Administration (FHA) loans by race leading up to and after the housing market collapse," says Maurice Jourdain-Earl, co-founder and managing director of ComplianceTech. "The purpose of the report is to shine a bright light on the facts regarding the distribution of loan types by race, the impact of loan types on the cost of credit, loan performance, and the disparities in access to credit for home mortgages."

The study, which used HMDA data collected from 2004 to 2009, shows that disparities exist for the three types of loans—prime, subprime, and those insured by FHA. Specifically, the study found that:

*Blacks and Latinos have significantly less access to prime loans than whites.

•Between 2004 and 2009, the number of prime loans to whites decreased 31percent, while prime loans made to Blacks and Latinos plummeted 76 percent. Prime loans to Asians fell 28 percent.

•Whites were the largest users of subprime loans, and their share totaled more than all those of borrowers of color combined. Between 2004 and 2009, whites received 4.1 million subprime loans, followed by Latinos, at 1.3 million; blacks, 1.2 million; and Asians, 179,000.

•The drop in the number of subprime rate loans was greatest for blacks and Latinos. For example, in 2004, blacks received 218,665 subprime rate loans. By 2009, that number was down to 10,416, a drop of 95 percent. In 2004, Latinos received 190,335 subprime loans, which then fell 92 percent, to 14,774, by 2009.

•Whites had the largest dollar volume and number of FHA loans in each year, from a low of 227,445 such loans in 2006 to a high of 1.2 million in 2009. Between 2004 and 2009, the number of FHA loans to whites grew by 238 percent, compared with 80 percent and 119 percent for blacks and Latinos, respectively.

Jourdain-Earl says he conducted the study because of his belief that the disparity in access to credit is exacerbated by the assumption that lending to borrowers of color was the root cause of the mortgage market meltdown. The HMDA data, he says, directly refute that contention.

"I was also motivated by the demographic shift in FHA lending, and the false accusations that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac contributed to the housing crisis by purchasing loans from borrowers of color to meet their affordable housing goals," he contends. "Many political leaders don't realize, or don't want to recognize, that it was mainly the volume of defaulted loans from white Americans that impacted the housing crisis. Minorities simply did not generate enough loans to have that kind of universal impact."

Jourdain-Earl says there are no public data available to ascertain the racial distribution of defaults and foreclosures.

"There is a dire need for foreclosure data to be collected by race and other demographic criteria, such as borrower income and income of census tracts," he says. "It would be easier to address the foreclosure issue if this type of information were available."