NEW YORK, April 27 (Xinhua) -- The persistent gap between the percentage of homeowners who are White and those who are Black continues even though homeownership rates in general climbed to 65.5 percent in 2020, a 1.3-point rise from a year earlier, The Washington Post on Tuesday cited the National Association of Realtors.

       While Black homeownership rates increased to 43.3 percent, they still lagged behind those of White Americans (72.1 percent), Asian Americans (61.7 percent) and Hispanic Americans (51.1 percent), according to the association.

       A recent study by the online credit market LendingTree dug deep into Census Bureau records to see how the share of homes owned by Black people in the nation's 50 largest metro areas compared with the Black population in those cities, finding that in every city, Black residents owned a disproportionately small share of homes compared with their population.

       Nationally, Black Americans were 15 percent of the combined population of the 50 largest metro areas, but they owned 10 percent of the owner-occupied homes in those cities. White Americans accounted for 64 percent of the population in those cities but owned 76 percent of the owner-occupied houses.

       The LendingTree study cited several reasons for the race gap in homeownership, including the difference in median household income, lack of enough access to mortgage, traditional credit and banking services, as well as "the lasting legacies of historical discrimination policies like redlining," said the report.