‘Scrub Blackness from Our Home’: Oakland Couple Forced to Whitewash Their Home to Prove Its Worth — Appraiser Who Undervalued It by $254K Now Faces Consequences
A couple in Oakland, California, has won a legal victory over an appraiser and lender who undervalued their home by $254,000 during a refinance, which the state determined was due to racial bias.
As the result of a settlement overseen by the California Civil Rights Department (CRD), Ronald and Dominique Curtis received $75,000 from appraiser Mehdi Mehdipour-Mossafer, who also agreed to pay $15,000 to the CRD and to watch “Our America: Lowballed,” a documentary on the impact of appraisal discrimination on Black and Latino families produced by ABC7 News in San Francisco.
The Curtises purchased a duplex in Oakland in 2019, hoping to build equity and some day leave the home to their young daughter, according to a statement by Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California (FHANC), a nonprofit organization.
After making significant renovations, in April of 2020 the home was appraised at $1.15 million. In December 2020, seeking to take advantage of historically low interest rates, they applied to Quicken Loans (now Rocket Mortgage) to refinance their home. As part of the process, Mehdipour-Mossafer, a licensed real estate appraiser, inspected the house and prepared an appraisal report.
The Curtises said they were shocked to receive a valuation of $900,000 from the appraiser — $254,000 lower than it had been appraised for earlier that year.
Ronald Curtis, who is Black, is a real estate agent in the Bay Area and Dominique Curtis, who is Puerto Rican and identifies as Latina, worked with him at a local brokerage and was training to be an appraiser at the time. (She is now a licensed appraiser). As real estate professionals they had access to multiple listing service (MLS) data and used it to compile and submit a 60-page appeal requesting a reconsideration of value, reported ABC7.
The couple took issue with the properties used in the appraisal report as comparable homes, including several that were blighted with boarded-up windows, a caved-in garage and bricks sitting atop roof shingles to hold them in place. They suspected racial bias might be at play.
But Mehdipour-Mossafer refused to change the appraisal, and ultimately the Curtises were unable to secure the refinanced loan. According to their complaint, the lender only followed up to offer a second appraisal after the Curtises went public with their concerns on local TV news.
Afterward, the Curtises reluctantly decided to sell their home. In preparing the home for sale, they removed all of their belongings, including family photos and other items indicating their race and ethnicity, according to FHANC, and hired a real estate agency to stage their home with neutral furnishings and show it to potential buyers.
In October 2021, the house sold for $1.2 million — $300,000 more than Mehdipour-Mossafer’s valuation.
The Curtises then contacted Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California, which reviewed their case and filed a complaint on their behalf with the state civil rights department against the appraiser; the mortgage appraisal management company (Clear Capital); and the lender (Quicken Loans), alleging race and national origin discrimination during the appraisal process.
The CRD conducted an investigation into the alleged discriminatory practices and determined there was cause to believe discrimination had occurred, including with respect to the appraisal and the denial of the loan, according to a CRD statement announcing the settlement in April.
After engaging in mediation, the parties reached a settlement.
Besides paying $90,000 in compensation to the Curtises and CRD, Mehdipour-Mossafer agreed to not engage in any form of unlawful discrimination in appraising real estate; to watch the “Our America: Lowballed” documentary; to participate in training regarding the history of segregation and real-estate-related discrimination in the Bay Area provided by FHANC; and to continue to abide by the Bureau of Real Estate Appraisers continuing education requirements, including at least two hours of elimination of bias training.
Clear Capital agreed to continue to maintain a consumer complaint system for tracking complaints of racial or ethnic bias against itself or appraisers it contracts with, and to retrain all employees who review complaints of racial or ethnic bias.
Quicken Loans/Rocket Mortgage agreed to continue its policies for evaluating loan applicant allegations of appraisal discrimination and offering a second appraisal where discrimination is alleged, ABC7 News reported.
Neither Clear Capital or Quicken Loans admitted any liability, misconduct or wrongdoing, and any monetary amounts they agreed to pay as part of the settlement were not publicly disclosed.
The appraisal management company sent this statement to ABC7:
“Clear Capital appreciates being able to work alongside the California Civil Rights Department to resolve this matter. We will continue to maintain the systems and processes outlined in the settlement agreement.”
The Curtises’ complaint is strikingly similar to another complaint filed with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development against Rocket Mortgage last year, when a Black woman in Denver accused Rocket and two appraisal companies of purposely undervaluing her home by more than $200,000 because of her race.
“Whether it’s lowball appraisals or a history of redlining, communities of color across the country continue to confront the multigenerational harms of housing discrimination,” said Kevin Kish, director of California’s Civil Rights Department, last month. “Appraisers, lenders, and brokers all have a responsibility to prevent discrimination in the real estate transactions. I applaud the family for speaking out. … Every effort to correct injustice makes a difference for those who come after.”
Homes in Black and Hispanic neighborhoods and homes owned by people of color continue to be valued lower than homes in white neighborhoods and homes owned by white people in California and nationally, noted the Fair Housing Advocates, citing research such as that published by the Brookings Institution in 2022 that shows homes in majority Black neighborhoods are valued 23 percent less than properties in mostly white neighborhoods.
“We shouldn’t have to scrub Blackness from our homes to get a fair shake,” Andre M. Perry, a Brookings fellow and author of “Know Your Price: Valuing Black Lives and Property in America’s Black Cities,” told ABC7.
Ronald Curtis said the appraisal ordeal has caused the family significant financial hardship that the modest appraisal settlement doesn’t cover.
“We’re renters now,” he said. “We’ve moved three times since, and we’re still trying to push and move forward. We don’t really know how it is going to affect us two or three decades from now.”