Research

The rapid rise in debt among American households over the last decade is well documented, but it is not well understood. Prior to the survey findings presented in this paper, there have been no data available to study how many American households are using credit cards and how they are managing their debt. To answer these questions, Demos, along with...

The Center for Responsible Lending has released an analysis of payday lending industry data, which estimates that: Active-duty military personnel are 3 times more likely than civilians to have taken out a payday loan One in five active-duty military personnel were payday borrowers last year. Predatory payday lending costs military families over $80 million in abusive fees every year. The...

On September 29, the House Committee on Financial Services will hold a hearing focused on mortgage brokers ("Licensing and Registration in the Mortgage Industry"). The Ney-Kanjorski bill (H.R. 1295) -- Title V -- attempts to address mortgage broker abuses by requiring states to pass uniform broker licensing requirements. Title V ignores the most serious and common abuses by mortgage brokers...

On September 13, 2005, the Federal Reserve released Home Mortgage Disclosure Act statistics on mortgage lending showing once again that African-Americans and Latinos pay more for home loans than comparable white borrowers. Lenders claim that weaker credit records explain the disparities, but the industry opposed collecting any information in the HMDA data that would shed light on borrowers' creditworthiness. Only...

Overdraft lending: the problem Our nation's major banks and credit unions are making unsolicited, high-cost loans to their checking account holders when their account balance dips below zero, generating enormous fees for the banks and frequently driving their customers deeper into the negative. Financial institutions never have to reveal that customers pay triple- and quadruple-digit interest rates. They make overdraft...

The cost of compliance is a small percentage of mortgage lending expenses. We estimate that the use of automated systems lowers predatory lending law compliance costs to about one dollar per loan. Strong compliance also may reduce lenders' expenses by lowering the incidence of time-consuming and expensive foreclosures. Most important, the cost of complying with state laws is dwarfed by...

On September 15th, 2004, the National Home Equity Mortgage Association (NHEMA) released a report by Professors Richard DeMong and Richard Netemeyer of the University of Virginia that asserts that New Jersey's Homeownership Protection Act of 2002 has decreased access to credit for non-prime borrowers in the state. The authors assert that non-prime lending was lower and comprised a smaller share...

This report quantifies the fees that people with checking accounts are now paying for high-cost, short-term overdraft loans. Many people are finding themselves with overdraft loans they never asked for, do not want, and cannot afford. Federal regulators have failed to protect these customers. The Center for Responsible Lending finds that borrowers are paying more than $10 billion per year...

While the payday lending industry frequently describes its typical customer in detail, discussion of race is noticeably absent. This report corrects that omission. Our analysis of North Carolina neighborhoods reveals a powerful relationship between the proportion of African-Americans in a neighborhood and the prevalence of payday lending stores. African-American neighborhoods have historically been disadvantaged by unfair lending practices. This study...

On March 1, 2005, the FDIC announced revisions to its guidelines to banks engaged in payday lending. The guidelines seek to "ensure that this high-cost, short-term credit product is not provided repeatedly to customers with longer-term credit needs." Thus, the FDIC has taken the important step of recognizing that payday lending can lead to a debt-trap. The guidelines call on...