I’ve been discussing the topic of real estate appraisals and the allegations of racial bias that has the possibility of creating issues for some homeowners or potential homeowners. There have been a few cases that have had the spotlight shown on them and the scenarios are all relatively similar.
It starts with an appraisal that is completed on a home where the occupant is of a minority race- whether the appraiser meets the occupant in person or there are pictures and other personal contents that elude to the persons race within the home. When the appraisal is completed it is perceived to be “low”. A subsequent appraisal is completed in which the home has now been “whitewashed”. If you haven’t heard of the term, it refers to the process of removing all indications of minority race within the home and even having a white person stand in as the fake homeowner. Some of the current cases out there are real life examples and others are experiments in which the entities conducting these are doing it for the sole purpose of trying to prove that the appraisal process is inevitably biased.
In either case, these are serious allegations.
I’d like to ask a few provoking questions that don’t have easy answers.
Does a value that comes in lower than what someone was expecting or desiring automatically mean the value is wrong?
When a homeowner or occupant is of a minority race, if the appraisal value is lower than what someone feels it should be, does that mean racial bias came into play?
Is it possible that the lower value was accurate and that the higher value was a case of reverse bias?
There is one case in particular that took place for a black couple out of northern California where the homeowners make this statement to CNN- “What that appraisal did is what we were actually asking the appraisers to do, to not consider race, to not consider neighborhoods and or the lines that have been drawn and perpetuated by redlining.” Based on this statement, if an appraiser stays within the neighborhood and the neighborhood happens to be primarily occupied by a minority group, does this indicate racial bias was a factor in completing the appraisal?
In the future, I’d like to discuss more the idea of neighborhoods and market areas. For now, I hope these questions have been thought provoking and at least given some pause to consider different angles.