Black couple settle lawsuit against realtors who valued their home $500,000 below market rate

A black Bay Area couple settled a lawsuit with the appraisal company that valued their home at just $945,000, when it was actually worth $1.5 million, a fact the couple only learned when they managed to get a white friend to impersonate him. your owner.

The undisclosed settlement victory for Paul and Tenisha Tate Austin includes compensation from Janette Miller, the appraiser, and her business, Miller and Perotti Real Estate Appraisers, which had two different employees appraise the Marin City home within weeks of difference in 2020.

In addition to the money, Miller must agree to see a documentary about the Austin family case titled Our America: Lowballed. She will also attend a training on preventing housing discrimination.

Northern California fair housing advocates were also named in the lawsuit as co-plaintiffs. The group’s chief executive, Caroline Peattie, said the san jose mercury news that the decision to settle was made because of the toll a long trial can take on a family.

“Obviously we felt we had a strong case or else we wouldn’t have pursued it in the first place. Filing a lawsuit based on the evidence is one thing, and how a judge will rule is a different question. You are never sure of a particular outcome. I think everyone involved in the case was ready to move on,” Peattie said.

Paul Austin said in a statement that the family was “glad” to put the lawsuit behind them, describing the experience of being belittled to such an extent as “overwhelming,” according to the Mercury News.

While his wife, Tenisha Tate-Austin, said: ‘The continued undervaluation of homes in black neighborhoods perpetuates the wealth gap between black and white families.

“We hope that by bringing attention to our case and this lawsuit settlement, we can help change the way the appraisal industry operates, and we may start to see a different trend,” he continued.

The Austin family purchased their home in 2016 for $550,000.

The couple of Paul and Tenisha said the first real estate agent to appraise the home was an older white woman, Miller, who used code phrases like “Marin City is a distinct area” when valuing the property which they believe was related to race, according to an interview they did ABC San Francisco in 2021.

The couple complained to their lender describing it as “a slap in the face” before the second appraisal was finally approved.

This time, the couple decided to run an experiment to see if their suspicions were correct, and got a white friend to pose as the owner.

They hid photos and artwork and replaced them with photos of their friends.

‘We had a conversation with one of our white friends, and she said. ‘No problem. I will be Tenisha. I’ll bring some photos of my family.’ She made our house look like she owned it.

“There are implications for our ability to create generational wealth or pass things down if our homes are priced at 50 percent less,” Tenisha added.

The couple has completed $400,000 in significant renovations in the five years since they bought the home, including a new floor that added 1,000 square feet of space, a fireplace, new appliances and an outdoor deck.

But when it came time to list the property, they found that the home’s value had risen by only 10 percent.

Paul believed that the short figure was due to the color of his skin.

“I read the review, looked at the number and was like, ‘This is unbelievable,'” Paul told ABC affiliate.

“We did our homework,” Austin told the Reparations Task Force at a panel on the racial wealth gap in October, as reported by the san francisco chronicle.

“We believe that the white lady wanted to devalue our property because we are in a black neighborhood and the house belonged to a black family.

“My stomach hurt, my head hurt, just from what we went through,” Austin said. ‘I don’t wish that on anyone.

‘I want to see a change. I don’t want my kids to have to deal with this,” she added.

Marin City, where the Austins live, is a historically black community.

“There are definitely things about this complaint that are exceptionally strong,” an attorney for the couple, Julia Howard-Gibbon, told the Chronicle. Basically, they erased themselves from the house.

The Austins’ attorneys note: “Marin City has a long history of undervaluing based on stereotypes, red lines, discriminatory testing standards, and actual or perceived racial demographics.”

Jessica Lautz, vice president of demographic and behavioral information for the National Association of Realtors, said the couple’s case was not unusual.

“We know that discrimination is found in almost every aspect of the home buying process,” he said. “We need to approach it as an industry.”

Black homeownership is much lower across the country, with just 44 percent of black Americans owning their home in 2021 compared to 74 percent of white Americans, according to a real estate firm. red fin.

In the state of California, only 34 percent of black Californians own a home, according to the National Association of Realtors.