11EZTHE WASHINGTON POST.
SATURDAY, NOVEMBER 2, 2019according to the Census Bureau,
making it one of the largest and
potentially most-lucrative demo-
graphics in the country for the real
estate industry.
But for black Americans —
whose overall homeownership
rates remain near record lows —
attracting a younger generation of
home buyers is even more critical.
For a minority group that spent
generations largely shut out of a
fundamental pillar of the Ameri-
can Dream, black millennials offer
the best hope for closing the per-
sistent racial homeownership gap
in the United States, housing ex-
perts and advocacy groups say.
Homeownership levels for
blacks reached 42.7 percent in the
third quarter of 2019 (compared
with 64.8 percent for the overall
population), a near-record low
that has virtually erased all of the
gains made since the passage of
the Fair Housing Act in 1968, land-
mark legislation outlawing hous-
ing discrimination, census data
show.
“African Americans are already
being left out of the housing mar-
ket and that’s exacerbating levels
of inequality in this country,” says
Lawrence Yun, chief economist
and senior vice president of re-
search at the National Association
of Realtors (NAR). “There’s a kind
of urgency now within the hous-
ing community to bring younger
African American buyers into real
SEE DEBT ON T12Rick and Astardii Hopkins explore a home. “The [student] loans hit us pretty hard” in their housing search, Rick says. But they worked
with a real estate agent who guided them through the financing process and eventually helped them secure a mortgage. The National
Association of Real Estate Brokers recently launched a campaign aimed at getting younger people of color to embrace homeownership.