African-Americans and Hispanics continue to be denied mortgage loans more frequently than whites and tend to pay higher rates when their applications are accepted, according to new data released Tuesday.

In 2004, the data for the first time also tracked loans with rates at least 3 percent points above a U.S. government security of comparable maturity. Nearly one in three African-American borrowers nationally received such a high-interest mortgage to buy a single-family home, or almost four times more frequently than whites' rate of 8.7 percent. The data have been collected under the auspices of the federal Home Mortgage Disclosure Act since 1989.

Data for the Fort Worth-Arlington metropolitan area generally show somewhat less disparity for loan denials. The local figures also show considerably fewer high-rate loans for African-Americans, but somewhat more for Hispanics.

The Star-Telegram reported similar results Sunday based on the newspaper's review of loan records for the 20 largest mortgage lenders in North Texas.

The Federal Reserve, in a report released Tuesday, said its examination found that more than two-thirds of the difference between African-Americans and whites regarding high-rate loans "can be explained by differences in the groups' distributions of income, loan amounts, other borrower-related characteristics included in the HMDA data, and the choice of lender."

The Fed also said that 2 percent, or more than 170, of the 8,853 reporting lenders showed significant differences that could not be explained by the data.

Information not in the HMDA reports, such as credit scores and the size of a loan compared with the value of the home, may explain the differences, the Fed said.

Lenders say such information is crucial when evaluating a borrower's creditworthiness.

"The information in the report is valuable to the mortgage industry, but it will take time to fully assess its contents," Doug Duncan, chief economist at the Mortgage Bankers Association of America, said in a release.

The Consumer Federation of American said its analysis of the data showed that homeowners in the Southwest and Southeast are much more likely to receive high-rate loans when they refinance existing mortgages than are homeowners in New England or on the West Coast.

Patrick Woodall, a senior researcher for the Washington, D.C.-based organization, said, "Consumers have every right to expect that the mortgage funds they borrow from lenders are priced fairly, based on legitimate risk factors, and not merely on opportunistic factors or lack of borrower knowledge and financial sophistication."

Last year, white applicants for conventional home loans were turned down 10.9 percent of the time nationally. In comparison, African-Americans were turned down 24.7 percent of the time -- more than twice as often as whites -- and Hispanics 18.4 percent of the time.

The disparities were less in Fort Worth-Arlington, where whites were turned down 13.1 percent of the time. African-Americans were turned down 22.2 percent of the time, or about 70 percent more frequently than whites, while Hispanics were turned down 20 percent of the time, or more than 50 percent more frequently than whites.

Native Americans were denied loans the most frequently locally, with a denial rate of about 26 percent, while Asians had the lowest denial rate for all groups at 13 percent.

Nationally, 11.5 percent of borrowers got high-rate conventional loans to buy houses. Asians got such loans least frequently, just 5.9 percent of the time, followed by whites at 8.7 percent. But African-Americans received high-rate loans 32.4 percent of the time, while Hispanics got such loans 20.3 percent of the time

In Fort Worth-Arlington, 10.8 percent of all borrowers got high-rate loans. African-Americans received such loans 23.1 percent of the time while Hispanics got such loans 25.1 percent of the time.

CHART: Tracking home loans; STAR-TELEGRAM