The Industrial Structure of Affordable Mortgage Lending

Frank Nothaft, Brian Surette

This paper examines trends in prime-market mortgage lending to low- and moderate-income families and to families living in underserved areas, hereafter affordable lending, during 1993– 99. In the prime market, affordable lending was increasingly done by mortgage bank subsidiaries of depositories. Savings institutions and independent (unaffiliated) mortgage banks provided a declining fraction of all affordable loans. Against this backdrop, the analysis looks at variations in affordable lending at the level of the lending organization with a special emphasis on the factors that explain that variation: We examine the role of lender size, local economic conditions, industry concentration, and cultural affinity on lenders’ affordable lending shares…