Professional Projects

Complete: January 2023

Published: April 2023

Project Description:

PCRG has annually compiled a mortgage lending study, examining the mortgage applications and originations for all Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) eligible lenders. In addition to the traditional written report that focuses on lending to low- and moderate-income (LMI) borrowers, LMI census tracts, and to minority borrowers - the online data dashboard includes additional information. This includes American Community Survey (ACS) neighborhood profiles, interactable maps, and more.

We found continuing racial disparities that negatively impact Black borrowers in Allegheny County even when comparing for income status, as for many lenders the mortgage origination rate was higher for low-income white borrowers than it was for middle- and upper-income Black borrowers. This continues to concentrate many of Allegheny County's Black residents into segregated neighborhoods of disadvantage.

Project Skills and Level of Difficulty:

Data Cleaning:

Cleaning and merging a decade of mortgage data over multiple format types, adding ACS data to provide context at the census tract level.
Observational Analysis:

Used SQL to create datasets and pivot tables that formed all the data visualizations (aggregating loan actions by lender, census tract income, borrower income, borrower race/ethnicity, and more).
Geospatial Analysis:

Joined shapefiles to FFIEC provided loan-level census tract data and community indicators created through ACS 5-year estimate data.
Data Visualization:

Created entire data dashboard using PowerBI comprised of loan data from 2012 to 2021, broken down by lender, lender type (mortgage firms, banks, and credit unions), neighborhoods and municipalities, race and ethnicity, applicant income level, and other factors.

Project Uses and Outcomes:

Data compiled for Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) comment letters used data dashboard for results.

Data compiled used for research related to Pittsburgh's Responsible Banking Ordinance and Depository Services contract.

Complete: April 2023

Published: August 2023

Project Description:

Due to rising concerns from residents and neighborhood community groups, PCRG authored a study measuring the activity of corporate entities (LLCs, Limited Partnerships, and others) in purchasing single-family housing units in Allegheny County from 2010-2021. As the lead author of the study, I tracked every housing transaction during that time period and geocoded the address data to fit census tract boundaries to see which neighborhoods, boroughs, and municipalities were most effected by corporate housing purchases.

PCRG found that there was strong correlation that corporate entities were purchasing single-family housing units specifically in neighborhoods with higher concentrations of minority populations and in low- or moderate-income neighborhoods. We did not determine any causal effects, though is does

Project Skills and Level of Difficulty:

Data Cleaning:

Cleaned 12 years of real estate transaction data for the entirety of Allegheny County, including fixing addresses and determining corporate status of all unique real estate purchasing entities.
Observational Analysis:

Calculated corporate purchasing rate, average purchasing price of all homes sold (for all sales and corporate sales), and other indicators to determine potentially predatory behavior.
Geospatial Analysis:

Matched coordinates to over 218,000 transactions in Allegheny County using cleaned addresses through the Census Bureau's free geocoder. Then used coordinates provided to determine census tract status to aggregate sales at the neighborhood, borough, or municipality level.
Data Visualization:

Created multiple maps and visualizations to show corporate purchasing trends over time. Also built a webtool using PowerBI showing each corporate purchase by census tract that shows the purchaser, use-code of the property, purchase price, and percentage of purchase price to census tract average price.

Project Uses and Outcomes:

Councilwoman Deb Gross introduced an ordinance to regulate the solicitation of purchasing real estate by certain entities.

Complete: February 2022

Published: April 2022

Project Description:

In order to better understand the changes in Black homeownership, PCRG authored a study to examine the changes of neighborhoods in Pittsburgh from 2010-2014 relative to 2015-2019 based on homeownership and other factors. Additionally, we compared the changes in Black homeownership at the county and MSA level to other similar counties and metro areas during that time period. This analysis primarily relied on American Community Survey (ACS) data and Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data.

We found that the region as a whole experienced a loss of Black homeownership, particularly as housing prices increased which resulted in nearly 75% of Black households residing in Allegheny County lived in census tracts in bottom 50th percentile of household income.

Project Skills and Level of Difficulty:

Data Cleaning:

Created metric to establish similar counties/MSAs based on population demographics between understand changes in Black homeownership throughout the 2010s. Also calculated community disadvantage index based on similarly existing methodology.
Observational Analysis:

Calculated homeownership rates and other figures using ACS 5-year estimate data, and calculated basic racial disparities in loan-level mortgage data.
Geospatial Analysis:

Analysis mostly done at the census tract level, but little extra done in terms of preparing and visualizing data.
Data Visualization:

Included many different charts, maps, tables, and graphs created using Datawrapper to illustrate loan disparities and changes in community disadvantage within Allegheny County.

Project Uses and Outcomes:

This report served as a methodology to begin analyzing gentrification and displacement through ACS and HMDA data, which informed later projects at PCRG.
Through this and future analysis, PCRG made the case to local mortgage lenders to create new and innovative mortgage products.

Last updated: September 25, 2023.