At New American Funding, we believe that buying a home truly is the American Dream. It helps create generational wealth and alters the trajectory of people’s lives. That’s why New American Funding has spent years focusing on increasing homeownership opportunities and education among minority communities across the U.S.
This effort to affect real change began in 2013, when New American Funding established our Latino Focus initiative, which seeks to enhance the quality of Hispanics’ experience when looking to obtain a home loan and enrich the Hispanic community through homeownership. As part of the Latino Focus initiative, the company continues to invest heavily in mortgage professionals who are equipped to work with Hispanic borrowers. This includes a focused effort on hiring bilingual employees.
But the company didn’t stop there.
After seeing the success of Latino Focus, New American Funding’s leadership expanded its focus on boosting minority homeownership and established the New American Dream initiative in 2016. New American Dream seeks to raise awareness and increase homeownership in Black communities by fostering consumer confidence through home buying education programs, increasing accessibility to a variety of loan programs, and mortgage industry career opportunity awareness to Black communities. Our employees who are involved with this program shape the initiative’s focused efforts. For its part, New American Funding frequently hosts seminars to educate consumers about the mortgage process.
In support of the initiative objectives, New American Funding also aligned with the National Association of Real Estate Brokers (NAREB), and the Consolidated Board of Realtists. NAREB aims to bring together minority professionals in the real estate industry to promote the meaningful exchange of business ideas and ways to serve clientele. As a result of these programs, New American Funding has built one of the most diverse workforces in the U.S. Approximately 60% of the company’s employees are women, 45% are minorities, and 37% are millennials.
These programs have led to New American Funding continually surpassing other large lenders when it comes to lending to minorities. For example, 32.9% of New American Funding’s home purchase loans in 2020 were for minority borrowers compared to the average for all institutions of 22.7%, based on the 2019 Mortgage Market Activity and Trends report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
Beyond that, New American Funding's purchase lending in 2020 was 44.9% more than the industry average in lending to minorities and 101.5% more than the industry average in lending to Black borrowers, based on the latest available data.
In the wake of the cultural issues our country is now facing, New American Funding is expanding both its New American Dream and Latino Focus initiatives in 2021 and beyond, aiming to increase the company’s lending to communities of color.
New American Dream also recently launched “The Listening Circle,” a growing group of hundreds of employees who discuss thoughts on current events and cultural issues. The program is designed to raise awareness of important topics and enact necessary changes in those areas.
But we know that we can’t tackle these problems alone. They require complex and collaborative solutions. That’s why New American Funding and New American Dream partner with top leaders throughout the financial services and real estate industries to share insights on how to develop, enhance, and promote mortgage industry best practices to reach the Black community.
“Dr. Martin Luther King had a Dream and here at New American Funding we want to do our part in keeping Dr. King's Dream Alive! In addition to a one-day national day of service, we honor Dr. King’s Dream of equal opportunity every day through our New American Dream Initiative,” said Charles Lowery, New American Funding’s Director of Legislative Policy and External Affairs.
“As Dr. King’s lieutenant, John Lewis, noted: ‘Freedom is the continuous action we all must take, and each generation must do its part to create an even fair, more just society,’” Lowery, who also leads the New American Dream initiative, continued. “We will continue to do our part to honor his legacy.”