 Community Reinvestment Act lending: is it profitable?Larry G. Meeker and Forest Myers Financial Industry Perspectives, 1996, issue Dec, 13-35 Abstract: In 1977, Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) to encourage federally insured depository institutions to lend in low- to moderate-income neighborhoods and to low- to moderate-income people. Since then, the profitability of the many special lending programs designed to achieve these goals has been questioned on both theoretical and practical grounds. ; The study examines the CRA loan profitability issue in the context of home mortgage lending. We surveyed 97 large institutions to explore profitability differences between their CRA and conventional home mortgage lending. ; Twenty-four percent of those answering the survey said their CRA lending was as profitable as their conventional lending. We found these lenders were more likely to treat their CRA lending like they did their conventional lending. Further, they managed to keep origination and servicing costs for their CRA loans similar to those for their conventional loans. These findings have important implications for lenders, community groups, government enhancement providers, and banking regulators as they seek wider markets for CRA loans. Keywords: Community; Reinvestment; Act; of; 1977 (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:fip:fedkfi:y:1996:i:dec:p:13-35 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article More articles in Financial Industry Perspectives from Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City Contact information at EDIRC. |
Is your work missing from RePEc? Here is how to contribute.
Questions or problems? Check the EconPapers FAQ or send mail to .
EconPapers is hosted by the
School of Business at Örebro University.