Black Owner's Home Value Doubles After She Hides Her Race, Gets A White Friend To Stand In For Her

A black homeowner from Indianapolis, who believed her house was twice undervalued by appraisers due to her race, had her white friend stand in for her on a third appraisal and got double the value for the same home.

Carlette Duffy has now filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development against the appraisers and mortgage lenders involved in undervaluing her home, reports IndyStar.

Duffy's home at the historic Flanner House Homes neighborhood was first appraised at $125,000 in March 2020 and then at $110,000 in April. She believed she had been low-balled due to her skin color. So, in November, Duffy removed photos of herself and her relatives and all indicators of her racial identity and had a white friend pose as her brother for the appraiser's home visit. To her shock, the home's new value was pegged at $259,000, more than double the earlier appraisals.

"I had to go through all of that just to say that I was right and that this is what's happening," Duffy told IndyStar. "This is real."

Duffy now wants the appraisals to be investigated. In her complaint, she alleges that the appraisals were "racially motivated and unfair comps were pulled in the appraisals."

The respondents in the complaint include Citywide Home Loans, its employee Craig Hodges and Jeffrey Pierce of Pierce Appraisal Inc., Andre Mammino and Doug Frimmet of Freedom Mortgage, Timothy Boston of Appraisal Network, and a third-party company, SingleSource, reports NBC.

She alleges the above-mentioned appraisers "violated fair housing laws by allowing race and color to impact their appraisals of her home and their lending practices."

Appraiser Tim Boston has denied the claim. "My appraisal reports are data-driven. I could care less about culture or sexual orientation. It's all about bricks and sticks and dirt," Boston told IndyStar. Nobody else named in the complaint responded to the allegations.

According to the Fair Housing Center of Central Indiana, a non-profit organization that filed the complaint on Duffy's behalf, it's "heartbreaking" that Duffy had to do so much to secure a fair appraisal.

A statement by the organization said Duffy had bought the home three years earlier for $100,000. "At the time of the first two appraisals, home values were rising dramatically," the statement said. Though she challenged the appraisals with market analysis data both times, she was rebuffed, according to the statement.

Andre Perry, a senior fellow with the Brookings Institution, told NBC that Duffy's experiences during the first two appraisals are not unique. "When a white person stands in for a Black owner, you're literally seeing the intrinsic value of whiteness being played out," said Perry. He thinks undervaluing homes in Black neighborhoods is "robbing people of opportunity."

Perry had co-authored a 2018 study, which found out that homes in predominantly Black neighborhoods in 2017 were appraised 23 percent lower than similar homes in majority-white neighborhoods.