Record sales to Hispanic home buyers

November 19, 2001

La Jolla, CA.--Hispanic home buyers accounted for a record portion of California's home purchase activity during the third quarter, the result of socio-demographic gains and available mortgage financing.

Buyers with Hispanic surnames bought 20.4 percent of the homes sold in California during the July-to-September period. That was up from 20.2 percent for the second quarter and up from 18.1 percent for last year's third quarter, according to DataQuick Information Systems.

DataQuick's statistics go back to 1989 when Latino home buyers accounted for 12.6 percent of the market in the third quarter. The percentage increased to 18.6 by fourth-quarter 1995, then declined to 15.2 percent in second-quarter 1998. Since then the percentage has steadily risen.

"This surge in Latino homeownership reflects a growing population of second-generation residents, many of whom are in the prime age bracket for home ownership. The vast majority are first-time buyers," said Mike Ela, DataQuick's president.

"Add to this the fact that lending institutions can make mortgage loans now that wouldn't have been possible just a few years ago, in large part because of today's better data availability," he said.

DataQuick, a business unit of Vancouver-based MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates, monitors real estate activity nationwide and provides information to consumers, educational institutions, public agencies, lending institutions, title companies and industry analysts.

The most common surnames of California home buyers so far this year have been Garcia, Smith, Lee, Martinez, Hernandez, Lopez, Nguyen, Rodriguez, Gonzalez and Johnson.

The median price for homes bought by Latinos was $175,000 last quarter, the median for all buyers was $234,000.

Hispanic buyers were most active in the Central Valley: in Merced County the percentage was 38.0 percent, followed by Tulare County with 34.6 percent and Monterey County with 34.2 percent.

High-cost and Northern rural counties were at the other end of the scale: Latino buyers accounted for 2.3 percent of the purchases in Nevada County, 3.3 percent in Shasta County and 4.7 percent in Marin County, DataQuick reported.

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