Buffett’s lending companies found to favor white people

nearly 28,000 loans worth $7.3 billion last year.

The potential for more growth clearly caught the eye of the octogenarian investor.

“HomeServices is on track to do only about 3% of the country’s home-brokerage business in 2018,” Buffett wrote in his most recent shareholders report, referring to HomeServices of America Inc., which controls Trident and two other mortgage companies. “That leaves 97% to go.”

But as they’ve become major players in cities across America, Berkshire Hathaway’s affiliated mortgage companies have followed a consistent pattern. Government lending data reviewed by Reveal from The Center for Investigative Reporting shows the companies direct their lending toward white borrowers and white neighborhoods, even in metros like Philadelphia where a majority of residents are people of color.

The analysis is part of Reveal’s ongoing coverage of modern-day redlining in America, which found 61 metro area s, from Jacksonville, Florida to Tacoma, Washington, where people of color were significantly more likely to be denied a conventional home loan than their white counterparts. This was true even when people of color earned the same amount of money as white loan applicants, wanted to take on the same size loan or buy in the same neighborhood.

Reveal’s analysis also found people of color were far more likely to be denied a loan in many of Berkshire Hathaway’s largest markets, including Atlanta, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. It makes loans through three firms , Trident Mortgage, HomeServices Lending LLC and Prosperity Home Mortgage LLC. Here’s a breakdown:

• In Philadelphia, Trident Mortgage made 1,721 conventional home purchase loans in 2015 and 2016, 47 of them to African Americans and 42 to Latinos.

• In Atlanta, HomeServices Lending made 1,358 conventional home purchase loans, 63 to African Americans and 46 to Latinos.

• In Washington, D.C., Prosperity Home Mortgage made 2,650 conventional home purchase loans, including 167 to African Americans and 144 to Latinos.