Black Couple Settles Over 'Whitewashed' Home Valued at $500k More: Report

Sep 21, 2023

A Black couple whose home was valued nearly $500,000 higher when their white friend posed as the owner has won a settlement in their lawsuit against the appraiser, NBC News reported.

When Paul Austin and Tenisha Tate-Austin's home in Marin City, California was appraised by Janette Miller of Miller & Perotti at $995,000 in 2020, they were suspicious because it had been valued at $1.45 million a year earlier, according to court documents viewed by Insider.

The lawsuit said the couple then "whitewashed" their home by removing family photos and art, and had a different appraiser, from another company, value the house. The family were not at home during the assessment and left a white friend to answer the door instead.

That second appraisal valued the home at $1.48 million – a $487,500, or 49%, increase from Miller's appraisal just three weeks earlier, per the filing.

Attorneys for the plaintiffs said in the lawsuit "race was a motivating factor in Miller's unreasonably low valuation of the Austins' house" because of comments she made in her appraisal report.

Court documents say her appraisal noted Marin City's "distinct marketability which differs from the surrounding areas," which lawyers argue "is coded based on race." Marin City is a historically Black neighborhood in what the San Francisco Chronicle reports as the whitest county in the Bay Area.

The couple will now receive an undisclosed sum, while the defendants must also watch a documentary on the topic called "Our America: Lowballed," per NBC News. The documentary follows Black and Latino families as they fight for fair home values after lower-than-expected appraisals.

"Having to erase our identity to get a better appraisal was a wrenching experience," Tate-Austin told NBC.

The plaintiff's attorneys and Miller & Perotti did not immediately respond to Insider's request for comment, sent outside US working hours.

This case isn't the first time discrepancies between Black and white homeownership have been discovered.

A Black family in Seattle similarly "whitewashed" their home and asked a white neighbor to fill in for them, bumping up the appraisal value by $259,000.

And last year, the New York Times reported on a Black couple in Maryland who filed a lawsuit after their home was valued $278,000 higher when a white colleague pretended to own the home.

According to the National Association of Realtors, Black Americans are 30% less likely to buy a home than their white peers, and are 2.5 times more likely to be rejected for a mortgage.