Language Proficiency and Homeownership

More on housing from me today. Interesting paper from Journal of Housing Economics published over the summer: the paper claims to be the first causal evidence linking immigrant language skills to homeownership.

The authors claim household income explains part, but not all, of the language effect, which I found particularly interesting. My assumption would have been that income would account for pretty much all of the disparity between homeowners versus non homeowners. They suggest discrimination as one of the factors that could modulate this observation: those who can't speak the language have even more difficulty navigating the complex home purchasing process.

Here's the specific breakdown, highlighting direct effect of english proficiency as affecting home ownership rates independent of income (5.3%). That's quite substantial. Learn English kids! It'll help ya buy a home.