May is Asian Pacific American Heritage Month! To commemorate the month, we want to share homeownership data with you about the AAPI population in the United States and locally. This data was gathered from Asian Real Estate Association of America’s (AREAA) 2019 State of Asia America Annual Report.
In 2019, the Asian American & Pacific Islanders (AAPI) homeownership rate was 57%, which was slightly down from 58.1% in 2018.
Other statistical data of note from about AAPI homebuyers nationwide included:
- Both AAPI homeownership rate and loan count (conventional purchase only) have been rising post-financial crisis.
- AAPI loans are more likely to have three or more borrowers compared to non-Hispanic whites, suggestively due to multigenerational households.
- In aggregate, AAPI tend to be younger, have higher credit scores and income than the overall population.
- The 52% of “Mortgage Weak” AAPI applicants (around 0.8 million) were thin files with clean credit records. They didn’t have bad credit but insufficient credit histories to generate a credit score. This is a huge opportunity for lending and credit education.
- There are around 4.1 million AAPIs in the U.S. that are “Mortgage Ready”.
- AAPI Count: 652,809
- AAPI Percentage of Total Population: 6.9%
- Mortgage-Ready AAPIs: 158,460
- Mortgage-Ready AAPIs that can afford a single-family home: 96,385
- Percent Affordability: 61%