Diversity needed in home value appraisers
Industry known to value black-owned homes less
Discrimination in the home appraisal industry means Black people face a tougher time getting a fair shake when trying to sell or refinance their homes.
The Washington Post published an article in January highlighting a Colorado couple who dealt with racial discrimination through appraisal practices.
The Denver couple received a value $95,000 lower than their estimation while the husband, who is Black, was present. They discovered the appraiser used comparable sales data from a predominantly Black neighborhood near the couple’s home.
The couple decided to schedule a second appraisal and ran an experiment. The wife, who is white, decided to be present for the appraisal alone. This time, the appraiser set the value $50,000 higher than their original estimation — an increase of $145,000 from the first appraisal.
“Race obviously played a role in how we were treated,” the wife told The Post.
Racial discrimination in the appraisal industry, like the case in Colorado, is an issue many Black people deal with across the country, including in Milwaukee, said Bethany Sanchez, senior administrator for fair lending with the Metropolitan Milwaukee Fair Housing Council.
Sanchez has heard of an example where a white family received an appraisal for a lot in Brewers Hill using comparable homes on the city’s east side across the Milwaukee River, more than a mile away.
In comparison, appraisers used comparable sales data from the surrounding neighborhood of the new subdivision development Josey Heights near North 12th and West Lloyd streets in the city’s Lindsay Heights neighborhood, Sanchez said.
“The (comparable homes) they pulled did negatively impact the initial appraisals,” said Michael Emem, president of the Emem Group, the company leading the development of new homes in Josey Heights.
Emem would have preferred to see the value of newly constructed homes based on their state-of-the-art design as opposed to valued based off the
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