Orange County NC Website
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Orange County, North Carolina - AIFCH - 2007 <br />Improvement applications were almost evenly split between originations and denials, with <br />47.7% originated and more than 42.5% denied. <br />The high home-improvement denial rate is a concern. Homeowners unable to secure funds to <br />maintain or enhance their homes will be unable to command a fair market price when they sell, <br />which can lead to deteriorating neighborhoods. It may also encourage people to become <br />absentee landlords who relocate without being able to sell their homes. The community may <br />want to look more closely at the types and uses of home-improvement loans. <br />During the late nineties and two thousands, the market experienced some of the lowest interest <br />rates in decades and refinancing activity outpaced mortgage originations. Origination rates for <br />refinancing loans were lower than home ownership mortgages; denials were higher for all races, <br />Blacks were two and one half times less likely to make an application than Whites, accounting <br />for 22.1 % of refinancing applications while Whites had practically 60% of the market. <br />Whites were almost twice as likely to be approved as Blacks, who had 32.7% of applications <br />originated and 37% denied compared to Whites with 61.2% and 18.8%, respectively. <br />There were 683 applications in the "race not available" category. This may indicate applications <br />received by phone or on the Internet, since there was a high rate of advertising for refinancing <br />from both sub-prime and prime lenders. <br />This is of concern because effective January 1, 2003, the FFIEC required lenders to collect race <br />and sex data on telephone applications", in an effort to ensure more accurate monitoring of <br />lending institutions for fair lending compliance. But in late 2003 and early 2004, regulatory <br />agencies made changes to HMDA reporting requirements that would make it difficult to continue <br />to get HMDA data. <br />6.9 Conventional Home Purchase <br />Conventional home purchase loans-generally available to borrowers with good credit ratings- <br />are astrong indicator of how many Orange County families are able to buy single-family <br />housing. <br />More than 60% of applications (1,262) for conventional home purchase were in the Orange <br />County MSA, 42.5% were in Orange County (934). focal lenders accounted for 31 %, or 295, of <br />conventional home purchase applications in the County. Bank of America led local lenders in <br />applications, followed by BB&T and RBC Centura. <br />focal lenders originated almost all of the applications for conventional home purchase that they <br />received. Five of the nine local lenders originated 100% of their applications. All but one lender <br />did better than the 75.7% benchmark for all lenders. Denial rates were well below the <br />benchmarks of 13.1 % of all lenders. Only Park Avenue Bank exceeded that figure, with a 29.6% <br />18 <br />