Closing the Gap in Homeownership

Closing the Gap in Homeownership: Rewriting the Rules Against Mortgage Discrimination written by award-winning author Anna Desimone, lights the way for homebuyers to step beyond bias and reach for equitable homeownership. Readers will discover what's being done by federal watchdogs to stop modern-day redlining and recent call-to-action rulings by enforcement agencies. 

Packed with eye-opening facts about gaps in wealth and home equity, this book is a valuable resource for housing advocates, realtors, and mortgage lenders. Thoroughly referenced with over 100 citations, DeSimone has tabulated key statistics for all 50 states on the rate of homeownership and mortgage denials by race and ethnicity. Other state charts list home appreciation trends, appraisal valuation metrics, and expanded state legislation to protect consumers based on income, ancestry, and LGBTQ+ status. 

Closing the Gap empowers prospective homebuyers to speak up, how to ask the right questions, and how to get the right answers. The author explains the importance for people of color, noncitizens, and lower-income households to self-advocate, and how to seek help from one of 4,000 HUD-certified homebuyer counselors across the nation. The book highlights educational tools available from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, Fannie Mae, and includes federal provisions of the Qualified Mortgage Rule, Fair Housing Act, and Equal Credit Opportunity Act.

Included are innovative mortgage programs for foreign nationals, self-employed borrowers, borrowers with no credit score or credit issues, unbanked and credit-invisible households. Other chapters cover down payment assistance, loan approval process, qualification worksheets and document checklists.   

About the Author:

A respected expert in fair and responsible lending, Anna DeSimone has authored more than 40 handbooks on the topic of mortgage compliance used thousands of financial institutions nationwide.

Winner of five national book awards, Anna is the author of the new book, Closing the Gap in Homeownership: Rewriting the Rules Against Mortgage Discrimination. Other books authored for consumers include Housing Finance 2020 (Hipoteca 2020 in Spanish), Welcome to the Agrihood, and Live in a Home that Pays You Back. 

Anna was founder and CEO of Bankers Advisory, a Massachusetts-based mortgage compliance audit services firm, now Clifton Larson Allen (CLA) Mortgage Advisory Services. Under her leadership, Anna and her legal staff reviewed mortgage documents of more than a million mortgages from all regions of the nation, where disparities in mortgage lending were assessed through side-by-side comparative analyses of white vs. minority loan applicants. 

Recognized as one of Housing Wire's Women of Influence, Anna has received prestigious business awards from Acquisitions International and Wealth and Finance Magazine, and has been featured as an entrepreneur in Bloomberg News