Zillow: “The Black homeownership rate has rebounded modestly from recent lows, but remains below its early 2000s peak as racial disparities in the mortgage and housing markets widened throughout the early part of the pandemic, according to a Zillow analysis of data from the Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA). The mortgage denial rate was 84% higher for Black applicants than white applicants in 2020 (the latest year for which data is available), according to HMDA, up from 74% in 2019. Nationwide, 19.8% of Black applicants were denied a mortgage in 2020, the highest among races and much higher than the 10.7% of white applicants who are denied. Black applicants had the highest denial rates in Mississippi (31%), Louisiana (26.1%), Arkansas (26%) and South Carolina (25.8%). And while Black homeownership has risen to 44% currently from a recent low of 40.6% reached in Q2 2019, it remains far below the peak of 49.7% set in 2004. Meanwhile the access gap between Black and white mortgage applicants continues to grow, setting Black would-be homeowners farther back from well-established wealth- and community-building benefits of homeownership than their white peers. This is partly a result of longstanding income and credit disparities that only deepened during the pandemic…”