Gray and Green: English Bay, Vancouver, November 2005

Fair Finance Watch resources

March 30, 2006

For sample code to combine multiple dat files, see this.

best,

elvin

March 5, 2006

I’ve revised the ‘wamu’ code from last year, to produce very quick tabulations of rate-spread loans by race/ethnicity (I’ve done nothing

yet on income.)  First, you must open up the “dat” file that the lender sends, and strip out the first one or two lines of text -- the lines

with identification information for the lender itself. These lines are not formatted the same way as all the other data lines, so this step

is necessary in order to get sas to read in the code.  You can do this in any text editor.  Then save the results.  Here’s an example of the

‘stripped’ version for icb. Then you can open SAS and run this code, making relevant changes to the directory structure I’ve used (in

this case, my working files are in c:\sasdat\icp).  The result will be two files in your c directory, which can be opened in Excel: this one

presents the ratespread/non-ratespread tabulations (ratespread=1) for all approved and originated first-lien conventional single-family

loans; this one presents a breakdown of action taken for all applications.

best,

elvin

Granger, Washington, February 2006

January 5, 2006

Matthew,

When you kindly sent me the *dat files for Wells and the other lenders, I took them through SPSS, exported to an older version

of SAS, then read them in with this file. Read this code file just to see how I defined the variables and such -- don’t run this code,

because you do not have the intermediate ‘temp’ files referenced in it. The final product of this batch code, however, should be

useful if you want to perform analyses on these lenders. It’s about two gigabytes, so please let me know after you’ve downloaded so

I can clear it off our server.

best,

elvin

December 13, 2005

Matthew,

I’ve revised the “newwamu” code again (still called ‘xlswamu’.) If you run this code using the same directory

structure you’ve been working with recently, it will automatically produce an excel file, storing the results in “c:\sastable.xls”.

Note that I’ve changed the coding of race and ethnicity slightly -- so that Hispanics who do answer the ethnicity question but

who do not furnish information on race are classified as Hispanic, not “missing/unreported.” Is this the kind of table that

you’d prefer? Let me know, and I can try to revise and reformat as needed. 

best,

elvin

San Diego, tourist playground in the gunbelt: Battleships and bistros; guns and galleries; seafood and seamen.

November 22, 2005

Matthew,

I’ve revised ratios.sas (the code described below) in three ways.  First, the code is now restricted with a set of fips codes corresponding

to census tracts in the Bronx; revise these to focus on the areas you want to analyze. Second, the code drops the 100-minimum lar

restriction. Third, the code now prints out the total number of white hicost originations, as well as race/ethnicity missing applicants.

The code is here.

best,

Elvin

November 15, 2005

Matthew,

I have completed major revisions on the sas command file. It is now designed to handle lenders that made no ratespread loans to

non-Hispanic whites, and to prepare a more readable output. You should first download a new, re-formatted version of the

Transmittal sheet data for lenders , however; this file replaces the spaces in long lender names with underscores (“_”). This

allows us to use the “Dynamic Data Exchange” function to transfer some of the data to Excel after SAS finishes processing (if the

lender names have spaces, then Excel mistakenly puts each phrase into a separate column of a worksheet). So, assuming you’ve

already got the New York lar downloaded, you should follow four steps: first, download the Transmittal sheet data for lenders

and replace the old one you’ve been using; second, download the revised ‘ratios.sas’ code, and open it in the SAS program editor;

third, open a new, blank Microsoft Excel worksheet, and save it on your computer under the filename “ddedata”; fourth, toggle

back to SAS (still keeping Excel running with that ddedata file open) and run the command file. After processing, you should

get readable output in sas, and back in Excel, a worksheet with a ranked list of lenders and their rate-spread lending disparities.

best,

Elvin

November 6, 2005

Matthew,

The files below are written assuming that you can create a directory, “c:\sasdat\ffw” (for Fair Finance Watch). Save these files into

this directory and run the SAS code. You’ll get a ranked list of lenders in the New York metropolitan area that have reported at

least 100 applications in 2004, along with series of cross-tabulations:

Loan application register data for New York metro area

as defined in the 2004 HMDA Cds

Transmittal sheet data for lenders

exported from 2004 HMDA Cds and edited to correct some (but not all) text errors

‘nov05.sas,’ a SAS command file that creates a ranked list and crosstabulation of lenders

The list is ranked in descending order according to the share of all originations that are rate-spread; the analyses then

produces cross-tabulations for those lenders with at least 100 applications in the study area and where at least 80 percent

of origination activity involves rate-spread loans.  Cross-tabulations display action taken on loan request, by race/ethnicity,

by applicant income.

Copy Left 2005, Elvin K. Wyly.