Analysis finds boom in Hispanics' home buying

Section: News, Pg. 03a

Home buyers with surnames such as Rodriguez, Garcia and Hernandez bumped Brown, Miller and Davis down the list of most common buyers' surnames in 2005, reflecting Hispanics' rapid advance into the middle class.

A DataQuick Information Systems analysis of deeds and county assessment data shows a dramatic rise in the number of Hispanic and Asian home buyers since 2000.

Smith and Johnson remain the two most common surnames, but Rodriguez has replaced Brown in third. Four Hispanic surnames are in the top 10, compared with two in 2000.

Hispanic names made up 14.6% of all home buyers' surnames, up from 10.3% five years earlier. "The Latino population is really integrating into the middle class -- and rapidly," says John Karevoll, analyst at DataQuick, a San Diego real estate information company that scoured public records in 37 states that accounted for 91% of the USA's real estate activity.

Asians also are bigger players. Nguyen, a common Vietnamese surname, moved from 23rd to 14th.

In California, almost 28% of home buyers are Hispanic, and the five most common surnames are Hispanic. Only one was in the top five in 2000.

The changes are dramatic elsewhere, too. No Hispanic surnames appeared in the top five in Illinois in 2000. Now, Garcia is third and Rodriguez fifth. Nevada went from zero to three and New Jersey from one to three. "It's startling how rapid the changes are," says Dowell Myers, a housing demographer at the University of Southern California. "People assume that Latinos are poor and that they're not a factor in homeownership. They're really integrating economically."

The rate of homeownership among the nation's 42.7 million Hispanics hit a record 50% in the last quarter of 2005, according to the Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Two major factors contributing to the spike: low interest rates and flexible lending rules. Twenty-five years ago, lenders would not consider a spouse's income when evaluating a home loan, Karevoll says. Now, various relatives can qualify by pooling their earnings.

"It's not just dual but triple and quadruple income," he says. "Husband, wife and husband's brother and then wife's brother."

Tracking race and ethnicity through surnames is not an exact science. "Lee," for example, can be Chinese or Anglo.

Hispanics are expected to make up 40% of first-time home buyers over the next 20 years, the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies says. A study by the Tomas Rivera Policy Institute at the University of Southern California projects that 2.2 million Hispanic households will buy homes between now and 2010.

"When we start showing up on the top list of names, that's fabulous," says Frances Martinez Myers, chairman of the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals. "It speaks to the growing economic clout of the Hispanic community. They are willing to assimilate ... to be part of the country and to pay their way. "

*State-by-state list, 15A

(c) USA TODAY, 2006