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Open in new tab This is the letter my grandparents received after buying their home. Their neighborhood was not redlined a the time. I particularly like the last few sentences:
One of the primary reasons that we specialize in residential mortgage loans is that we are thus doing business with the very individual whom the Savings Bank was designed to serve. Savings Banks were created to benefit those of modest means. These mutual non-profit Banks are best performing their allotted task when they cater to the homeowner.
With kindest regards, I am, cordially yours, George F. Scott, Mortgage Officer.
Reading this document, I am amazed how things have changed especially in light of the sub-prime mortgage crisis and financial collapse of 2008 when values such as these and a personal relationship with a banker might have prevented many bad loans to distressed or unqualified homeowners. Imagine taking out a ‘no doc’ loan then! In the years leading up to the crisis, sub-prime loans were disproportionally marketed to African-Americans, even those who would have qualified for a traditional fixed rate mortgage. It was a financial scheme designed to fail. And fail it did, leaving the predominantly Black communities of Bedford Stuyvesant and Jamaica, Queens in its wake as the epicenter of the foreclosure crisis.