Mortgages

Mortgage Deserts: Mapping Which Rural and Urban Communities Remain Left Behind by Mortgage Finance

By Sharon Cornelissen, PhD

Without access to mortgages, homeownership would be out of reach for most people. The American invention of the 30-year mortgage has made homeownership possible for millions of families. But even today, mortgage credit is not equally available everywhere.

In lower-income rural communities, where good jobs are scarce and credit scores are low, families often struggle to qualify for a mortgage. And in housing markets where many real-estate investors are active, even pre-approved homebuyers lose out to cash offers. Mortgages also remain hard to get for homes priced under $150,000, for fixer-upper properties, and for manufactured housing. As a result, mortgage access is uneven across communities, shaping exclusion and unequal opportunities.

This report introduces the new idea of “mortgage deserts,” which are places where relatively few homes are purchased with a mortgage. Mortgage deserts are defined as the bottom ten percent of rural areas and the bottom
ten percent of urban areas nationwide where the lowest shares of homes are bought with a mortgage. Mortgages remain scarce in these communities, even as people still buy and sell homes.

 

This report answers three key questions:

1. In what U.S. counties are few homes bought with a mortgage?
2. Why are mortgages rarer in these rural and urban communities?
3. What can policymakers do to expand financing access and better support homeownership in mortgage deserts?