No, Appraisers Didn’t Cause America’s Racial Wealth Gap
After years of feckless payouts by insurance companies and corporations, the era of using the courts to harass appraisers for their value opinions has ended.
Last week, a U.S. District Court judge in Maryland threw out a discrimination lawsuit on summary judgment. It was brought against an appraiser by a militant professor at Johns Hopkins University and his wife, who passed away since the filing of the suit. She, too, was a professor at Hopkins.
The Maryland appraiser, Shane Lanham, relied partly on crowdfunding to stitch together a successful defense against the spurious allegations. He received an assist by a key ruling in April in which a U.S. District Court judge in Ohio dismissed a similar meritless discrimination lawsuit against an appraiser. Both lawsuits were based on hunches and disparate-impact quackery. The lawsuits were so flawed as to be shocking.
The two dismissals were a blow to the deep-pocketed housing lobby – the Realtors, homebuilders and lenders – and their captured patrons in government. The housing lobby has sought to delegitimize and sideline third-party appraisers for decades. Cheerleading these lawsuits seemed like a new low, even for this bunch. It was a scorched-earth campaign that inflicted severe harm on random individuals for simply doing their jobs. For a subset of academics and agitators, the lawsuits were about providing justification for radical mortgage-lending policies grounded in the tenets of DEI and critical-race theory.
While the housing lobby may have lost the battle in federal courtrooms, it’s still winning the wider war to subvert long-accepted mortgage underwriting safeguards, like FICO scoring, title insurance, mortgage insurance, downpayments and appraisals.
The campaign began in earnest during Covid under the first Trump administration, was combined with critical-race theory under the Biden administration and has continued, minus the racial-grievance storyline, during the second Trump term. The removal of time-tested mortgage-lending guardrails passes enormous risk onto the U.S. taxpayer while allowing the privatization of profits by large corporations. A largely unexamined byproduct of this has been today’s massive housing inflation.
Lanham, a state-licensed real property appraiser based in Parkville, Maryland, had the misfortune of being assigned to appraise the Hopkins professors’ home on behalf of nonbank lender loanDepot. The lender was also named as a defendant in the professors’ lawsuit, but LoanDepot quietly extricated itself from the lawsuit by paying off the plaintiff what one attorney familiar with the case believes was approximately $400,000. Lanham’s success in getting the case dismissed in summary judgment casts a spotlight on the cowardice of LoanDepot’s settlement with the plaintiff. It left Lanham to defend himself alone. Along the way, Lanham countersued for defamation. His countersuit was dismissed when the judge tossed the main case.
When the Maryland case, known as Connolly and Mott v. Lanham et al, was filed, the Hopkins professors, who were black, alleged Lanham, who was white, had undervalued their home in 2021 due to racial animus when the appraiser’s opinion of value failed to reach the roughly $550,000 necessary to make a refinance work. Both professors had built their academic career around racism, historical grievance and class struggle. Nathan Connolly’s 33-page resumé can be viewed here.
Court filings showed billings by a Washington, D.C., civil rights law firm to be more than $3 million for work done on behalf of the Hopkins professors. Records examined earlier in the year show that over a two-and-a-half-year period, the Beltway law firm Relman Colfax billed 5,411 hours to the case at an average hourly rate of $583 with total expenditures reaching $3.15 million. The source of the funding is rife with speculation.
The Ohio case was known as Daviola-Turner v. Henley Appraisals LLC. The federal judge in that case noted the lack of any factual basis whatsoever for discrimination in claims against the appraiser; the judge dismissed all the plaintiffs’ causes of action as a result. Grasping at all straws, one allegation by the plaintiffs and their crack legal team was that the appraiser had discriminated against one of the plaintiffs because she was a Canadian.
In the Maryland case, it was a surprise to no one that the plaintiffs were affiliated with Hopkins, a hotbed of divisive racial theory over the past few years. Last year, its medical school’s Office of Diversity, Inclusion, and Health Equity issued a “privilege” hit list that consisted of sweeping and offensive generalities and stereotyping of people based only on their skin color. It caused a mutiny among faculty physicians that was only partially quelled by a published apology by the school’s dean. The tension still simmers under the surface.
Wrote Judge Walter Rice of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio in the Henley case: “The court is not required to blindly ignore the obvious alternative theory [to the assertions of discrimination]: that Henley honestly thought the property was worth the amount that he appraised it for. Merely stating that Henley discriminated against the Turners is insufficient as a matter of law.”
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I hope Senator John Kennedy is aware of this situation.
It is astonishing that the normal course for complaints was not followed. It is telling, in any case similar to these, when the Plaintiff’s immediately take legal action. Bias has no place in Real Estate Appraisals, Real Estate, or life for that matter. Laws need to be put in place to protect appraisers from false claims of bias. Mr. Lanham’s case never should have made it as far, or as long, as it did. Mr. Lanham also should be able to recover some or all of his financial loss (legal fees and lost revenue), as it was none of his own doing. That is not justice. We all need to get these two legal outcomes out to the media, and ensure it gains the same national attention as the initial suits obtained.
I couldn’t agree more. He was harmed emotionally, in his career and financially. In awarding summary judgement, the judge clearly stated there was no case there however the same can’t be said for the damages done to the appraiser that is a matter of record. Dismissing his suit in a “not harm, no foul” gesture was wrong in so many ways. He should have been allowed to pursue his lawsuit and that would have put real teeth in the summary judgement. Looking for a quick settlement to enrich your life? You may want to think again.
Another great Bagott article. However, the ‘appraisal modernization act’ had it’s second reading on the senate floor this July. The bill codifies the same type of discovery in these cases, would be a publicly searchable database of all appraisals related to mortgage origination, from 2017, including identifying appraisers, including usda and va.
Proponents of valuation equity are full speed ahead, FHFA did nothing about it. The avm final rule stands. In laymens terms the ‘non discrimination quality control factor’ is an algorithmic adjustment applied to avm utility tools which effects value output based on race of borrower. NFHA may have lost it’s funding, their avm coding solutions may have remained in place. The ‘tech equity’ hackathon. This is what nobody wants to talk about, the back door to manipulate value output to make every deal work regardless of the effects this has on affordability or market inflation. ‘To prevent valuation bias.’
Article quote; ‘A largely unexamined byproduct of this has been today’s massive housing inflation.’ / It is becoming common knowledge among the professionals whom deal with real property that special interests have disrupted traditional process, inserted themselves upstream of regular citizens, has been granted special access by the twins that nobody else has. While the people scramble to mitigate fictitious claims of racism, including lawsuits to back, the methodology and standard procedures surrounding existing regulatory oversight and property conveyance safeguards were dismantled, new proprietary utilities installed in their place.
https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/senate-bill/2322/text
Tech equity hackathon. Intimidating appraisers was only half the story. Those whom bankrolled the events got what they wanted, a new system without appraisers.
You nailed it. The Appraisal Modernization Act getting its second reading is a big deal, and that searchable database of appraisals including USDA & VA is a serious overreach. It’s like handing out our work history with a spotlight and a magnifying glass.
I get the concern about AVMs and equity-based adjustments, but what’s missing from the conversation is how these tools are being positioned as “neutral” while quietly embedding bias through design. It’s not just about inflating values, it’s about who controls the algorithm and what outcomes they’re optimizing for. Appraisers are being sidelined not because we’re flawed, but because we’re inconvenient to a system that wants speed and pliability over scrutiny.
Baggott’s line about housing inflation being an unexamined byproduct? Couldn’t be more accurate. We’re already seeing the cracks. You can’t prop up a market forever if buyers stop showing up.
Appraisers used to be the guardrails for everyday lending. Now we’re watching the train speed up with no brakes, all because they pushed us out in favor of “modernization.” If this bubble pops, it won’t be because of us, it’ll be because they stopped listening when it actually mattered.
Thanks. Note how addenda clarification material is not included in disclosure, rather only known in form data. Obviously they drew the proposed regulation around the existing UAD data mapping, disregarding the larger underwriting process. Question; How might updated UAD data gathering fields further expose appraisers to additional liability?
Possibly the best appraiser commentary over the past five years on this matter; ‘They tortured the data until it confessed what they wanted to hear.’
The fact that over $3 million was spent on litigation should signal to any reasonable observer that this case was backed by powerful interests intent on advancing a broader narrative—specifically, one that frames appraisers as agents of systemic racism, regardless of the evidence. The plaintiff, in this context, appears to have been a vehicle for that agenda.
Ironically, the framing of this case may come across as more racially charged than the conduct it sought to condemn. Common sense suggests that appraisers are being singled out precisely because they represent one of the last objective checkpoints in a housing industry increasingly driven by ideology rather than data. Undermine the appraiser, and you remove a key safeguard—opening the door to unchecked valuation practices.
If the logic behind these accusations were sound, then similar scrutiny should apply to Realtors who list and sell properties, and to Assessors who determine taxable value. But that’s not the narrative being pushed. Fortunately, the judiciary appears to be cutting through the smoke and mirrors. It’s reassuring to see judges applying reason and rejecting baseless claims.
Meanwhile, public figures like Waters and Fudge, who have made inflammatory remarks without consequence, continue to stoke divisive narratives and exit quietly when scrutiny arises. That pattern is troubling.
I commend the appraiser for standing firm under immense pressure, and I extend appreciation to those in the profession who supported him. As for those who remained silent or withheld support—especially when even a modest contribution could have helped—this moment calls for reflection. The profession owes him a debt of gratitude.
I finally watched “Lowballed” the other day and holy smokes was it infuriating. I probably sit to the left of most in our profession and I fully believe that depressed values in historically redlined communities are echoes of those practices. However, the way to address that problem is not to undermine the credibility of the appraisal.
When someone argues for a point that they don’t believe for the purpose of affect some desired outcome, that is a bad faith argument. If you say the appraiser should have been at $1.4mm but you yourself would never pay a dollar over $1.1mm, that’s a bad faith argument. Sacrificing truth for truth is never the right solution.
We had nothing to do with redlining. That was a lender game and it was a long time ago. We don’t make the news, we report the news. Believing that we make the news is superstition. The reporter that reports on the trainwreck didn’t cause the trainwreck. The public schools haven’t done their job in six decades and the American public has reverted to belief in magic and superstition.
Back around 1990 I did an appraisal for the FDIC, maybe some of you remember those days. A previous “appraiser” had appraised this piece of land which was mostly taken up in a RR ROW and a public road cut across/through it. I think it was six very old, unusable residential lots. Neither the RR ROW nor the public road were considered in the previous appraisal. It was appraised as if it was simply six usable residential lots. When they got my appraisal wherein the value was just a fraction of the previous “value”, I was accused of “making” the value of the property less. At that moment, I realized what I was dealing with. I’m fairly sure also that they hired someone else to appraise it to “get that value back” where they wanted it to be. Superstition is the enemy.