Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

To date, research on rural mortgage markets in the United States has been limited by a lack of data on the specific mortgage experiences of borrowers living in rural areas. To fill this data gap, the National Survey of Mortgage Originations conducted a survey that oversampled people who took out mortgages in completely rural counties in 2014. This paper shows results from this survey, contrasting the characteristics, experiences, and loan terms of mortgage borrowers in completely rural counties to those of borrowers in metropolitan and other non-metropolitan areas. Completely rural counties are those with no urban cluster or an urban population less than 2,500. The paper finds that borrowers in completely rural counties paid slightly higher interest rates on average and were less satisfied that their mortgage was the one with the best terms to fit their needs than borrowers in other areas. These results persist even after controlling for income, credit quality, and other borrower characteristics. Completely rural borrowers were less likely than other borrowers to be satisfied with the mortgage closing process, the timeliness of disclosures, and the disclosure documents themselves. Finally, compared with borrowers in more urban areas, borrowers in completely rural areas tend to be less confident or less knowledgeable about some details of mortgages, and they are more likely to initiate contact with their lender.