The Housing Discrimination Study (HDS) Innovative Methodology Project identified three innovative methods for detecting and measuring housing discrimination. This project builds off previous HDS research and is specifically motivated by a 2015 issue of Cityscape which documented that paired-testing methodologies may underestimate discrimination. This Final Report documents the feasibility tests of these methods.

• Discrimination in Refinance Appraisals: Measures disparities in appraisals for Federal Housing Administration (FHA) refinanced mortgages. This study shows that Black- and Hispanic-owned homes are valued 1.3 and 0.8 percentage points lower than comparable White-owned homes, respectively.

• Selective Advertising in the Rental Housing Market: Estimates the prevalence of selective advertising discrimination in which landlords choose not to advertise certain units, instead reserving them for prospective tenants after an initial screening or other process to select renters based on certain attributes. The evidence of selective advertising highlights a disparate impact and suggests a new direction for targeting enforcement resources.

• Discriminatory Lending Practices: Measures two indicators of the mortgage lending process, time to close and closing cost indices. The study finds that for Black borrowers, it takes three days longer to close a loan, and they pay 0.04 percent more in closing costs than their White counterparts.