Black Homeowners Face Discrimination in Appraisals
nytimes.com
nytimes.com
>>> She took all family photos off the mantle. Instead, she hung up a series of oil paintings of Mr. Horton, who is white, and his grandparents that had been in storage. Books by Zora Neale Hurston and Toni Morrison were taken off the shelves, and holiday photo cards sent by friends were edited so that only those showing white families were left on display. On the day of the appraisal, Ms. Horton took the couple’s 6-year-old son on a shopping trip to Target, and left Mr. Horton alone at home to answer the door.
The new appraiser gave their home a value of $465,000 — a more than 40 percent increase from the first appraisal.
But it's not just an appraisers opinion based on appearance or alleged racism. It's a concrete written record that can be reviewed. So what was the actual mistake? - did the appraiser pick bad comparables? - do the math wrong??? - completely miss certain features of the property or sq. ft.?
Let's answer that before we just blindly assume it was caused by an -ism vs. incompetence.
So every now an again an grouchy, incompetent, or crank appraiser will give a terribly flawed appraisal. This does happen, and when it does you show why it was flawed enough and get a new one done. Just like what happened. It's a big problem, but if it is bad enough to get overturned, trust me it's a big problem for that appraiser too, and it won't happen more than a couple times before they're fired.
The second fallacy is that we assume the good appraiser was only good because he checked all the family portraits and noticed they were white enough to pass muster.
Maybe the bad appraiser just sucked and the good one just did his job correctly? And neither even noticed the pictures on the wall?
But that news would be a nothing sandwich that wouldn't ignite a twitter-storm...