Bank of America Adds $10 Billion to Affordable-Housing Plan Through 2025

(Bloomberg) -- Bank of America Corp. pledged to add $10 billion to an affordable-homeownership program through 2025, tripling its initial commitment.

The plan is aimed at low- and moderate-income communities, and may enable 60,000 individuals and families to purchase homes, the bank said in a statement Wednesday. The program includes as much as $10,000 of assistance for down payments, as well as grants of as much as $7,500 for closing costs such as title insurance and recording fees.

“If you look at the numbers, you can see there is a disparity of low- and moderate-income individuals in communities of color in terms of homeownership percentages,” D. Steve Boland, president of retail at Bank of America, said in an interview. “We want to work to bring that disparity down, and we want to do it in a responsible way.”

The latest pledge expands on an initial $5 billion commitment from 2019, which facilitated 21,000 home purchases and $180 million in grants for down payments and closing costs. New homeowners from that cohort have been able to withstand the economic shock from the pandemic relatively well, Boland said. They've had low rates of mortgage deferrals, the vast majority of which have rolled off.

The expanded homeownership program comes after the Charlotte, North Carolina-based lender last year made a separate, four-year commitment of $1 billion intended to address economic and racial inequality. That pledge includes investments in minority-focused banks and investment funds.

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