Perpetual Building Association

This is just a bit of information to expose that I know nothing.

I’ve started including information about the lenders in the Black Home Owners of Truxton Circle series. The problem is I have no idea sometimes of what I am looking at. I know I am going to have to go back over some of my posts and correct the misstatements about loans of $19K-20K. That was a misreading on my part.

One of the several lenders is the Perpetual Building Association. They loaned funds to Julia Dobbins, the Brungers, John Robinson and others.  I tried looking up information about this organization or lender and most of what comes up are sites about the Perpetual Building Association Building in Silver Spring, MD. I did find something that was a little bit more about the entity that was also about the building. I have no opinion about the building. I don’t have even enough information to have an opinion about them as a lender.

I am old enough to remember there was some savings and loan crisis 30 some odd years ago, but I’m not sure if the S&Ls and building associations were the same thing.

If anyone has more info about the Perpetual Building Association as an organization, please comment.

3 thoughts on “Perpetual Building Association”

  1. Disclaimer — not an expert either, so take this as a nudge, not a map.

    Basically, you’ve hit on the core problem with the “redlining” argument. Redlining, as we understand it, only came into being with the federal guarantee on 30 year mortgages. This was the new deal, FHA, and what would eventually become fannie mae — the HOLC.

    You can’t lend money for 30 years without a guarantee. The private insurance would be too much, so the feds did it.

    Now, that isn’t to say that you couldn’t borrow money to buy a house before 1934. (Likewise, in the UK until very recently you only had 10-15 year loans, and Canada has the same). Just not the 30 year note that we think as standard.

    Then you’ve got to go the idea of a savings bank (which was a radical notion, and one that may be over actually) and building societies (which are essentially like a saving and loan).

    S&L made sense when Reg Q gave them a small bonus for interest rates, but once that went they got killed in the 80s on commercial real estate.

    So that is big picture. On to perpetual.

    Looks like a standard s&L, with the caveat they would lend to blacks. What is interesting here is they are also loaning money ion redlined areas.

    One place that I don’t know is very elaborate history between the “deed of trust” and “mortgage”. In this area the deed of trust wins and I am sure there are differences in the evolution and history — although today they are practically the same.

    But I could see them putting up a deed of trust for smaller loans in the 1920s. Primary advantage of the deed of trust is the property is held by the trustee so you can do a non-judicial foreclosure.

    1. I have no idea what I’m looking at. But I do know this series has me looking at a lot of land records. Trusts seem to be for loans or financial transactions. Releases tend to be for acknowledging the payment of loans from the trust. But I encountered a release that wasn’t about that, with Malinda Powell’s post. And just as I start to think I know how the records work, I stumble across something that makes me wonder if I knew anything to begin with.

      I’ve posted or written (several are scheduled) over half of the 1920 Black Home Owners. I am hoping that once I move on to 1930, I can get more evidence of AfAms buying homes in TC, as the 1920 census one just seems to capture the ones who already bought. FDR didn’t get into office until 1933, so the 1930s TC home buyers would have been before official redlining.

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