By Katie Rogers, Truth Staff
ELKHART -- The growth of a Latino population has made a significant impact on the American housing market both nationally and locally, but only 48 percent of the estimated 11.7 million Hispanic households in the United States are families that own their own homes.
This statistic, released by Notre Dame's Institute for Latino Studies, doesn't include noncitizen Hispanic homeowners. ILS estimates that 34 percent of noncitizen families are home-owning.
The number of local Hispanic home buyers can't be concretely determined, but the institute's "Hispanic Housing in the United States 2006" study reports that by 2005, the number of Hispanic-owned homes in Indiana had grown somewhere between 11 and 20 percent since 1995.
Allert Brown-Gort, the institute's associate director, said the Elkhart area is "more a place of secondary migration. A lot of people show up, live in California for a while and come to the Midwest."
Secondary migration patterns may indicate a certain degree of economic stability for families that move to Elkhart County, thus influencing the number of Hispanics able to buy homes where they see cultural familiarity.
Officials from the Elkhart County Board of Realtors had no comment for this story.
Brown-Gort, said "what's available, what's affordable" is the number-one factor determining where Hispanic families choose to move, but that "chain migration" comes in a close second.
"If you don't know the culture well or how things work. your best bet is to go someplace where you know somebody," said Brown-Gort. "It's a creation of what's called an ethnic enclave."
When it comes to the state of the housing market, though, Coldwell Banker Realtor Miguel Montiel said business has been at its slowest since he started in real estate 12 years ago.
Miguel said he usually sells around 80 homes in the $90,000 to $130,000 price range per year. He estimates about three-quarters of those home buyers are Hispanic.
This year he's only sold 16, and about 13 of those home buyers were Hispanic. He expects to sell around 20 homes by the end of 2007.
Montiel added that he's noticed a lack in current Hispanic home buyers actually being able to keep their homes.
"The business is a little bit devastated," said Montiel. "Several factors, like people getting laid off, business getting slow and people can't afford their homes."
Property taxes, he said, hit a lot of families hard this year.
"Even though they filed exemptions, their payments were high," Monteil said. "It's affected loan payments."
Another ILS study, "Promoting and Maintaining Household Ownership Among Latino Immigrants," said that the key to increasing home ownership and home retention among Latinos lies in designing methods for wealth creation -- such as credit-building programs and underwriting guidelines for loans -- designed specifically for the immigrant community.