Monday, January 19, 2009

Mortgage/Housing Crisis Hits Latinos: The Press Spins it Again!



Author: Joshua Dorkin • URL: http://www.biggerpockets.com/ January 8th, 2009 •

The Associated Press just released a troubling article regarding the Latino community and the housing crisis. If you were to glimmer through the headline and a paragraph or two, you’d think that Latinos are helping drive the housing crisis as a whopping 9 percent happen to be behind in their mortgage payments.

"Nearly one in 10 Latino homeowners fell behind in mortgage payments last year, and about 3 percent said they had received a foreclosure notice, a Hispanic research group reported Thursday.The Pew Hispanic Center’s survey of Hispanic adults found that 9 percent said they missed a mortgage payment or made a partial payment during the past year. "

We’re going to see article after article about this study, and the press will likely put their usual spin on the situation.

Sometimes Bad News is Actually Good News

What most people who see this and the other media pieces won’t get to is the part of the article that tells us that the Latino community is actually handling itself better than the US as a whole.

"The strain felt by Hispanic homeowners seemed consistent with that of all U.S. homeowners. The Mortgage Bankers Association reported last month that a record one in 10 American homeowners with a mortgage was at least one month behind on payments or in foreclosure at the end of September 2008."

So, why is the press not pointing out the fact that there is a 1 percent gap between the rate at which Latinos are faltering and the rate that Americans in general are faltering? Obviously, if you remove the margin of error, there probably isn’t much of a difference in these rates, but why do we have to point out certain communities?

What is shocking is that despite being targeted with subprime and other exotic loans, this community is faring pretty well relative to the rest of the country.
How about the mainstream press write about that?
:) I would like to thanks Joshua for sharing this great blog with our community.
Gracias,
Bill Arce

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