In every April General Conference, we hear the Statistical Report for the prior year. Roughly speaking, the Statistical Report tells us the number of church units, the number of members and baptisms, the number of missionaries, and the number of temples.
And reading a Statistical Report in conference has at least a century of precedent. I’ve been skimming through a number of early-20th-century April Conference Reports, and in April 1915, Pres. Joseph F. Smith read a statistical report in his opening remarks. [fn1]
That century-old statistical report is similar to, albeit slightly more detailed than, the ones we hear today: Pres. Smith reported on, among other things, the birth and death rates of the church, the number of missionaries serving (1,431), the number of church units, and the number of temple ordinances performed.
One thing leapt out at me though: Pres. Smith reported that 73% of Mormon families owned their own homes.
A little later in the same address, he provided some editorial commentary on Mormon homeownership:
Now, we have a few more statements that I desire to read: Our records show that 73% of all the Latter-day Saint families, residing in all the stakes of Zion, own their own homes. I am sorry that this figure is not as large as it has been in the past, but we have become more numerous than we were when 95% of the people of the Church owned their own little homes and owed nothing to anybody for them.
Three years later, Pres. Smith read, as part of the statistical report, that the Mormon homeownership rate had increased by seven percentage points: in 1918, 80% of Mormon families owned their own homes.
A Warning Against Mortgages
As important as homeownership seems to have been,[fn2] it was not an absolute good. In October 1916, President Smith began his remarks thus:
I have just one little short sermon: Get out of debt, keep out of debt; never mortgage your homes nor your farms.
In the April 1915 talk linked to above, he went into a little more depth:
Let me inject here, once more, my standing admonition to the Latter-day Saints: My brethren, see to it that you do not put a mortgage upon the roof that covers the heads of your wives and your children. Don’t do it. Don’t plaster your farms with mortgages, because it is from your farms that you reap your food, and the means to provide your raiment and your other necessaries of life. Keep your possessions free from debt. Get out of debt as fast as you can, and keep out of debt, for that is the way in which the promise of God will be fulfilled to the people of His Church, tht they will become the richest of all people in the world. But this will not happen while you mortgage your homes and your farms, or run into debt beyond your ability to meet your obligations; and thus, perhaps, your name and credit be dishonored because you over-reached yourselves. “Never reach farther than you can gather,” is a good motto.
So what’s up with his antipathy toward mortgages?
As we read him, it’s probably important to note that mortgages in 1915 are pretty foreign to mortgages as we think of them today. The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage that is tokay’s default product was not introduced until after the Great Depression. In Pres. Smith’s day, residential mortgages generally had terms between five and ten years. Rather than amortizing, like plain-vanilla mortgages today do, pre-Great Depression mortgages were structured as bullet loans, with the full principal due at the end of the term. During the life of the loan, moreover, most loans featured a floating interest rate.
Although loans were smaller—generally less than 50% of the value of the residential property—if a borrower couldn’t come up with the principal or refinance at the end of the term, they would have to sell their property (or, I assume, risk foreclosure).
Which is to say, I don’t think that Pres. Smith’s specific condemnation of mortgages carries any moral weight today in the U.S. It’s virtually impossible today to buy a house without borrowing, and the terms and protections have changed.
That said, it’s probably worth taking seriously his recommendation that we not stretch ourselves beyond our ability and that, when we borrow, we do so carefully, and that we calculate what we can afford to buy realistically.
But mostly, I think it’s interesting that the church announced, in Conference, homeownership rates.
—
[fn1] The history of statistical reports may go further back than 1915; I started my research there, though.
[fn2] And it seems, rhetorically at least, to have been important. In October 1911, Elder Joseph R. Shepherd, the president of Bear Lake Stake, spoke about how we can recognize the goodness of the Saints from their fruits. Among the fruits? “I presume that you will find no larger percentage of people who own their own homes, or who are independent so far as means are concerned, than among the Latter-day Saints.”
Filed under: Mormon
