Another "paired" appraisal allegation, Seattle

[George Hatch]

They made the mistake of showing a blurred image of the location map in the video. If you look at it you can see that ONE of the sales is located west of MLK Blvd; the others are all in the subject's immediate neighborhood. The irony is that it looks like the neighborhood to the west has higher pricing than the subject neighborhood, not lower.

 

[George Hatch]

Just a few quotes that seem unfathomable:

1. "Dr. Junia Howell, an urban sociologist and race scholar who studies home appraisal disparities across the country."

2. said Howell....

"Appraisal manuals from the 1930s to the 1970s perpetuated the belief that race was linked to value. One appraisal manual from 1946 ranked, in their words, “Negros and Mexicans" at the bottom of a list of who brings value to a neighborhood. At the top? White Europeans."

3. "According to the U.S. Department of Labor, 96.5% of appraisers are white and 70% of them are men."

4. "According to the Brookings Institute, the net worth of a typical white family is nearly 10 times greater than that of a Black family."


I guess if you take aim with a shotgun your bound to hit something. The white/black thing is being to resemble the Salem witch trials.

I doubt there are any appraisers alive who were instructed out of that text. I've been around for a long time and I had never even heard of it until she dug it up as if it indicates to how we were actually trained. Whatever our donkeys are doing, they're not doing it because they were actually trained or otherwise encouraged to act that way.

 

[Elliott]

 

[Elliott]

About

Junia Howell is an urban sociologist and race scholar who uses quantitative (numbers) and qualitative (narrative) tools to identify and dismantle the specific policies, processes, and practices that uphold White supremacy. Currently, her work focuses on the policies, processes, and practices within the housing appraisals industry, disaster relief, and empirical methodologies.



Her work has been published in over a dozen academic journals including Social Forces, Social Problems, The Sociological Quarterly, Sociology of Race and Ethnicity, Urban Studies, Ethnic and Racial Studies, Population and Environment, Sociology Compass, Socius, Context, and Phylon. It has also been featured in hundreds of news articles across a wide array of outlets, legislative hearings, presidential speeches, and federal and local bills.



Prior to her current position, Howell was an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh. She received her PhD in sociology from Rice University.

Howell, Junia | Sociology | University of Illinois Chicago

soc.uic.edu

 

[Terrel L. Shields]

Wouldn't be hard to discount the sale across the street. Just start with it is about 60% larger. That in itself would generally disqualify it.

Well, you have to analyze it to discredit it right?

 

[CGinMN]

African art, whitewashing, old appraisal texts, generational wealth, 96% white appraisers, the Brookings study, interviews with non-expert “experts,” no interviews with appraisers… this story follows the same formula as all the others, almost like it’s being pre-scripted.

Why didn’t the white co-borrower stand in instead of the neighbor? Where’s the lawsuit?

 

[Dublin ohio]

Well, you have to analyze it to discredit it right?

Not sure what you are trying to get at. It is obvious that the first appraise did not use it. Whether or not they explained that in the report. We will probably never know. The second appraiser did use it. I would really like to see that analysis and reasoning

 

[Elliott]

Here is one of those "Real Estimates" graphs. Back in April 2022 there was quite the hickup with Ouantarium where they thought value were up and down by $200,000 within just a few months. Challenging times for appraisers and AVMs doing a refi (?).

 

[George Hatch]

Why didn’t the white co-borrower stand in instead of the neighbor? Where’s the lawsuit?

I completely missed that angle. The other question is why the writer for the piece, who must have personally met the man we see at 0:20 of the vid while she was interviewing the kid and his dad, and who must have seen both the interior and exterior of the home - why didn't she ask these questions? Is this what passes for journalistic competency and integrity these days?

 

[Sandra Koutsopoulos]

I had not taken seriously the idea that appraisers were ethnically biased in coming to value conclusions, as in each and every instance, in every neighborhood, I have done the research to let the numbers bring me to the value. Square footage, condition, views, upgrade quality and quantity, time on market, etc.... until a year or so ago when I did an appraisal on a somewhat unusual property. It was on a large suburban parcel, started with a 3200 sf 2-story house... then 2 more SFRs were recently built on the lot, all occupied by the same family, all creating a family compound. After I did the measurements and photos, the owner pulled me aside to thank me for being professional and courteous to her, which I thought was a bit unusual. Then she told me that the LAST appraiser who had come through with his side kick, sat down on her couch and said to her that it looked like she was "N**g*r Rich"! Honestly, I was shocked; still can't get that episode out of my head. It hurt my heart to hear that, and reflect on how uneven/unfair life is for some of us, how we may be misjudged or treated like "less than" by another person due to our color, religion, or any other irrelevant-to-value fact. That incident should never have happened, and makes me think how unprofessional and rude that appraiser was. We earn our living giving unbiased value opinions to our clients. Thank goodness we even HAVE clients and borrowers that require our expertise in order to move forward with their financial goals. I truly hope that was an aberration, but it was a terrible reflection on our profession and the trust consumers place in us.