Mortgage Loans A Columbus mortgage company will compensate African-Americans who paid higher prices for home mortgage loans than equally qualified whites in the Cleveland area, under an agreement reached in October with the Justice Department. The Department began reviewing the lending practices of Huntington Mortgage Company in August 1994. In a complaint, filed with the settlement in U. S. District Court in Cleveland, the Justice Department alleged the company engaged in racial discrimination in the pricing of mortgage loans in violation of the Fair Housing Act and the Equal Credit Opport unity Act. The court must still approve the settlement. The alleged discriminatory pra ctices occurred over a two-year period ending in September, 1993.
Many loan officers have the discretion to charge a fee higher than the minimum.
Loan officers typically receive some or all of the overage they charge. It is not common knowledge that such fees are negotiable. Credit is the lifeblood of economic survival and should never be jeopardized based on race. The Justice Department estimated that 117 African-Americans were charged higher prices than whites. Patrick noted that the disparities in the overages did not occur by chance and cannot be explained by differences in the borrowers, loan qualifications or other factors unrelated to race.