Omer Ali (UPitt): The Distribution of Federally-Insured Mortgages: 1935-1975, Evidence from Local Land Records
Abstract: This project develops a novel dataset of federally-insured mortgages from 1935 to 1975 by digitizing local land records from county recorders of deeds across a geographically diverse set of U.S. counties. Despite the Federal Housing Administration (FHA) and Veterans Administration (VA) programs accounting for up to 50% of all mortgages for some years during this period, systematic borrower-level data has been unavailable due to a lack of federal records and decentralized county recording systems. Using a new pipeline that deploys large language models to digitize scanned mortgages, we identify and extract information from FHA-insured and VA-guaranteed mortgages, geolocate properties, and link borrowers to full-count Census data from 1940 and 1950. This produces the first comprehensive address- and borrower-level dataset beyond 1940. We investigate the share of Black borrowers among FHA and VA mortgage recipients, characterize the spatial distribution of mortgages across neighborhoods that vary in racial composition and HOLC ratings, and examine the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of borrowers. The analysis enhances our understanding of how federal housing policy shaped metropolitan development and racial inequality during the New Deal and Civil Rights eras.
Economics
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