AANHPI home ownership lags behind Whites despite having higher income and better credit rating

Discriminatory practices make it difficult for AAPI to purchase a house.

Despite having generally higher incomes and more education, Asian Americans, Native Hawaiians  and Pacific Islanders lag far behind Whites in home ownership.

Between 1980 and 2019, Asian households had the largest homeownership rate increase of any racial or ethnic group, from 52% in 1980 to 60% in 2019. However, AAPIs fall far below the national homeownership rate of 65.6% and the non-Hispanic White figure of 73.8%. 

The AAPI community has been greatly impacted by the pandemic and subsequent hate crimes which has created additional barriers to homeownership, says a report, the 2020-2021State of Asia America.

The Asian Real Estate Association of America, a national nonprofit trade organization focused on improving the homeownership rates of the Asian American Pacific Islander (AAPI) community,  released its 2021 State of Asia America report, a comprehensive review of the housing trends and associated issues facing the AAPI community. 

The 38-page report found that while Asian Americans nationwide have a household income of $93,759, 35% higher than the national average, only 60.6% of Asian Americans are homeowners. 

Likewise, Pacific Islanders have a household income of $66,464, 1.1% higher than the national average, but only 41.1% are homeowners. 

"The 2021 State of Asia America report showcases how the AAPI community has continued its movement across the country. But even with factual evidence of greater income than the general population, our homeownership rate remains surprisingly low," said AREAA President Amy Kong, co-founder of Trust Real Estate in San Francisco. 

Founded in 2003, the Asian Real Estate Association of America (AREAA) is a national nonprofit trade organization dedicated to improving the lives of the Asian American and Pacific Islander  community through homeownership. 

"And the challenges we face grew substantially throughout the pandemic, including job losses as well as an immense increase in hate crimes and subsequent housing discrimination that are forcing so many to stay in their current communities rather than move to new and unfamiliar places. The hope is the AAPI community will be resilient and continue to make a positive impact on the U.S. as the fastest growing racial or ethnic population."

AREAA found that of 22 studied U.S. markets with a large percentage of AAPI population, only the Riverside, Calif. market, (71%), Washington, D.C. (69%), Miami (69%), Houston (69%) and Atlanta (67%) saw the AAPI community with a higher homeownership rate than the national average.

Kong pointed out that the South is becoming increasingly popular with the AAPI community as it has the highest AAPI homeownership rate (65.4%). Of the states with the highest Asian population, Georgia led the nation with a 66.9% homeownership rate for the community, slightly above the national average and the 64.1% state level. The Asian homeownership rate was below the overall state percentage in Illinois, Minnesota, Massachusetts and New York.

The report shared that while nearly half of the AANHPI community reside in the West, with nearly a third in California, the community also has a large presence in the Seattle region (14.6% of overall population), New York City (11.5%), Washington D.C. (10.4%), Las Vegas (10%), Boston (8.3%), Houston (7.3%), Dallas (7.3%), Chicago (6.9%), Minneapolis (6.9%), Philadelphia (6.1%) and Austin (6.1%).

Besides language difficulties in obtaining loans and going through the complicated process of buying a house, several explanations could explain the lower homeownership rate nationally, including that many Asian American, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander households live in California and New York where housing costs are among the highest in the country; and subtle discriminatory practices by real estate agents and lenders, according to studies by the Urban Institute.

Other findings in the State of Asia America Report:

• In the first quarter of 2021, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development saw a 30% increase in complaints of housing discrimination, with approximately 10% of those complaints involving some aspect of connecting COVID-19 to the person's ethnicity.

• Since the start of the pandemic, more than two million AAPI adults have experienced anti-Asian hate incidents. Verbal harassment (68.1%) was the most common form of this racism and discrimination, followed by shunning (20.5%), physical assault (11.1%), being coughed at/spit at (7.2%), online trolling (6.8%) and workplace discrimination (4.5%).

• In the fourth quarter of 2020, 46% of unemployed Asian workers had been out of work for more than six months, as compared with 21% in the fourth quarter of 2019 (Pew Research Center).

• AAPI females were disproportionately affected with 44% of unemployed AAPI women suffering long-term unemployment.

"The impact of job losses and hate crimes are fueling AREAA's continued work in advocating on behalf of the AAPI community," Kong said. 

"We continue to showcase the importance of alternative credit needs as so many in the AAPI community have been culturally adverse to credit, but have good jobs and savings. We also are working hard on overcoming language barriers, especially when it comes to the paperwork involved in real estate transactions. But now we have to overcome even more. 

"It will be interesting to see how the added stressors impact on the AAPI homeownership rate which had seen a steady rise from 53.7% in the second quarter of 2016 to 61.4% four years later only to fall to 59.6% through the first quarter of 2021," Kong said.

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