Thread by @ShontaviaJEsq

A while back, my husband and I got a racist-ly low appraisal on our home. After much back and forth with these people (how they thought they could try it with TWO Black lawyers is beyond me), we got the appraiser to change it and closed on the loan yesterday 🔥. Renovation time.

Interestingly enough, I taught Property Law at @DrakeLawSchool for nearly a decade. I got [numerous] comments on my teaching evaluations that I talked about race too much and that it was distracting.

This happens TOO OFTEN to Black folks. Systemic racism is cancer.

We were already planning our next step--getting a white woman to stand in for us next time:

https://twitter.com/JulianGABC7/status/1360432373544849409?s=20

I have to give my husband credit--he spent hours and days going through property records and comps. He wrote an entire report pointing out the discrepancies. The time, energy and expense of racism is exhausting.

And here's the thing. I was a city planning commissioner for 2 years. He's on our neighborhood design review board. I've taught property law. We both have JDs. He has a PhD. We had to leverage every bit of this to get a decent outcome. What happens to other folks? I'm still mad

One white man tried to tell us that he couldn't believe "that kind of thing" would happen in our area after we sent him articles like this.

We live in South Carolina, y'all. I just.....

nytimes.com/2020/08/25/rea…

Unfortunately I know this will continue to happen. Here are some things we did once we realized the appraiser was on some B.S.:

I guess this is a thread within a thread:

-Research comps ahead of time. Set notices to find out when homes are for sale in your neighborhood. We (my husband mostly) knew every sale that had happened and cost per square foot of homes that were selling in our neighborhood

*It also helped that, as a former city planning commissioner, I spent 2 years seeing EVERY residential & commercial projects in our city. All these docs are public records in most, if not all, cities. Arm yourself with historical data.

- Read EVERY WORD in that long ass appraisal doc. The appraiser made assumptions about the quality of our renovation that were wrong and unsupportable. We argued against everything that he wrong that was mistaken about, in writing and with evidence.

- Get a realtor experienced in your neighborhood to research comps. Have those addresses ready, especially if the comps the appraiser chooses are ridiculous. (@PolitiTea gave me this recommendation). We offered to pay ours a few hundred dollars but she wouldn't take it.

- Have a white person in your back pocket. As I said earlier in the thread, our backup plan was to get a second appraisal and stage the home with a white person and her white family photos. This strategy works. (see videos and articles earlier in this thread).

To this point about having a white person, ours is RIDE OR DIE. She wanted to have a strategy meeting. She had ideas to *whiten* up the space with accessories. May sound over the top but multiple Black realtors gave us the same advice.

news.yahoo.com/home-appraisal…

So. Many. Typos. But y’all get the point.

And my “too much” was probably 2-3x in a semester-long 1L property course, using 1-2 cases from a phenomenal book on Race and Property Law by @KaliMurray3 & others.

Also, take down your family photos. As @DLHughleyRadio has said, “their perception of you is costing you and your family actual wealth and livelihood.”

Yo, if you’re Black, this can happen to you. Check out DL Hughley’s story:

Final point, our contractor is an older white man with BIG good-ol-boy energy. Even with everything we did, the appraiser still called him to confirm the accuracy of our written explanations. 🙄. Not saying you shouldn’t hire Black contractors at all. IJS be prepared for that.