The San Jose and San Francisco metro areas had the highest average income for home loan borrowers in the nation’s 50 largest cities, according to the report’s analysis of 2020 federal lending data. San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara borrowers earned an average income of $261,434. In the San Francisco-Oakland-Hayward area, the average was $241,889.

Although the Bay Area’s pool of homebuyers is more diverse than in many other places, the report’s authors found that decades of homebuyer assistance programs have done little to help. shift racial disparities. Most notably, the homeownership gap between black and white American households – 44% for black Americans and 74% for white Americans – remains near a 120-year high, due to factors such as lack of access to credit, more frequent loan rejections and a higher average. closing costs.

“The mortgage market isn’t doing enough,” said Joshua Devine, director of racial economic equity at the National Community Reinvestment Coalition. “There are still lingering gaps.”

To create more opportunities to reap the financial rewards of homeownership, his group is urging housing regulators, banks and Congress to support a 60% homeownership goal for Black residents and Latinos, more strictly enforce fair housing laws, increase oversight of how banks serve non-white customers, and expand programs for homebuyers who would be the first members of their family to own property .

Across the country, according to the new report, black borrowers were more than twice as likely as white borrowers to be turned down for mortgages in 2020. Latino, Native and Pacific Islander borrowers also saw lower rates of rejection. higher and higher average closing costs. When it comes to refinancing, white homeowners and those of Indian or Chinese descent tend to get the most favorable refinancing terms, which Devine says reflects a system in which those with the most wealth initially are the most able to take advantage of prime financing.

As it stands, the report found that the diverse San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara metro area has the highest loan rate in the nation to non-white borrowers, at 63% of loans in 2020. While Devine said local federal loan data is not easily broken down into more racially specific categories, with the region’s high average loan size of more than $948,000 and average equity at close of nearly 409,000. $ suggests Bay Area shoppers of all races are more affluent.

The cumulative effect is “to maintain the disparities in ownership that are at the center of America’s racial wealth divide,” wrote Dedrick Asante-Muhammad, chief membership, policy and equity officer at the National Community Reinvestment Coalition.

In competitive markets like the Bay Area, heightened scrutiny of racial gaps in housing finance is colliding with pandemic-era bidding wars and a rush for low-interest refinancing that has also raised concerns about racial bias in home appraisals and other facets of the financing process. .

For those who already own homes but currently earn less than their local median income, California also opened applications last month for a $1 billion COVID-19 mortgage relief program. Governor Gavin Newsom’s administration plans to serve 20,000 to 40,000 households behind on monthly home payments after the pandemic and temporary federal foreclosure prevention programs expire.

“Homeowners whose mortgage payments were put on hold during the pandemic are now facing the end of those forbearance periods,” Tiena Johnson Hall, executive director of the California Housing Finance Agency, said in a statement. “The California Mortgage Relief Program will alleviate some of that anxiety and give eligible homeowners a chance to catch up.”

Lauren Hepler is a staff writer for the San Francisco Chronicle. Email: [email protected]: @LAHepler