The Scam of Racial Discrimination by Appraisers

Recently, a highly respected appraiser who is also a senior designated member of a well-known national professional peer association, wrote an article about a new proposed law in New York ostensibly targeting New York appraisers.

Mr. Bagott’s article had an unusual amount of hyperbole within it which is not reflective of his typical or usual objective approach to issues affecting appraisers. He may have been understandably angry when it was written.

Because of that, I linked directly to the bill to see what it says for myself.

The Bill’s introduction refers to the Federal Government’s ongoing & well-documented practice of racial discrimination in housing and finance promoted by FHA in & since the early 1930s.

It then jumps to the 100% fully discredited Brookings Institute Study (based on Dr. Andre Perry’s own flawed, and racially biased perceptions) as some kind of (unsupported) evidence of appraiser discrimination.

This bill is not unlike the buck-passing and pandering recently adopted by HUD and The Appraisal Foundation. They start by identifying proven racial discrimination by the Federal Government, by FHA (you can read it yourself the 1934 FHA Guidelines here). Then they deflect that long-term systemic discrimination as being carried out by real estate appraisers.

To this day, even with the Marin County settlement case that was settled simply because the attorneys wanted to get paid; there is not one credibly proven case in America of appraiser discrimination or bias affecting the appraiser’s conclusions.

Not one.

That doesn’t mean appraisers have not been low or high in appraising Black American property.

Just as their White fellow Americans have learned, no appraiser can be 100% accurate 100% of the time. Appraisers can and do make mistakes. Honest mistakes. Even careless mistakes. I’ve never seen a race based mistake.

Alternatively, there are also appraisers lacking the competency to handle what may be complex appraisal assignments either due to a lack of training or because they have never encountered specific issues that may be present in a particular assignment.

For example, how many times have appraisers had to appraise in a worldwide pandemic followed by worldwide, national, regional, and local economies like the U.S. has been subjected to since January 2020? Economics affects market value.

To assume lower than hoped for or desired values are the result of racism is simply unsupported. If it exists at all it is so rare as to never have been adequately identified, analyzed or honestly prosecuted.

Does anyone really believe that hatred is so great that despite all the publicity about accusations against appraisers (even though unsupported) highly trained professionals are going to deliberately jeopardize their careers and reputations to go out of their way to harm our Black American neighbors economically?

It takes far more work and follow-up time and aggravation whenever a value comes in lower than hoped for than it does when contract prices or believed values equal price expectations.

There is simply no plausible motive for any appraiser to intentionally appraise property low. Frankly, we can lose our licenses for poor appraisal practices even without racism being a factor.

Anyway, I think the New York proposed law is going in the wrong direction. I think it is little more than a placebo to those it is supposed to help while facilitating egregious regulatory & enforcement consequences on appraisers there. Its only real benefits will be to the hustlers and race baiters who will receive the grant funds for perpetuating the myth. In the long run it is going to result in actual appraiser shortages as opposed to the shortages of convenience used to circumvent FIRREA 1989.

More and more appraisers are retiring every day. Aside from that more and more are changing to lower liability careers. Eventually, the opportunists who have been promoting the scam of racial discrimination by appraisers such as career politicians, and ‘anti-discrimination’ software hucksters like Black Knight will be shown to be what they truly are. Although Black Knight was chosen by Fannie Mae to be one of their six approved Value Acceptance partners, appraisers have not forgotten that it was their former staff counsel Abeena Horton who is seen to have originated the anti-appraiser bias accusations in Florida.

Yet oddly enough, after the racist appraiser meme took hold in the country she never actually filed her complaint with HUD or state authorities according to informed sources. One has to wonder why.

In the meantime, check the bill out for yourselves.

Please feel free to repost this on your own or other group Facebook pages, or any other media.

You can read Jeremy’s article here.