Shirley Salmon-Davis, formerly of East Liberty. (Courtesy of the Fair Housing Partnership of Greater Pittsburgh)
One appraiser saw the homeowner’s masks and drums. The other saw it with all indications of Black ownership removed. Now the complaint becomes part of a national discussion of appraisal fairness.
by Rich Lord, PublicSource
Shirley Salmon-Davis decided to conduct an experiment on her way out of Pittsburgh, but hoped the findings wouldn’t be so noteworthy.
Salmon-Davis, who is Black, had her East Liberty house appraised twice. To the first appraiser, she presented as the homeowner and left her masks, drum, wooden sculptures and family photos in place. Three days later, a second appraiser was greeted by a white friend and instead examined a house with all indications of Black ownership removed.
“I was hoping that there wouldn’t be a difference, that both appraisals would be the same,” she said in an interview, nearly a year after the two appraisals occurred. “My hope was that I wouldn’t be humiliated or suffer some mal effect as a result of my skin color.”
Two appraisals of the same Highland Park house, showing values $36,000 apart, share a wall at Harrison Kinnane Smith’s exhibit at the Mattress Factory. (Photo by Ryan Loew/PublicSource)
Appraisals are estimations of the value of a home, typically done prior to a sale or mortgage, that are supposed to be based on the recent sales of comparable homes in the same area. It’s not an exact science, as homes are never identical and thus the comparable prices need to be weighted to account for differences. But appraisals can be evaluated, after the sale, according to how close they came to guessing the ultimate price.
In the case of Salmon-Davis’ former home in East Liberty, a block from the border with Highland Park, the appraiser who she met put the value at $400,000. The appraiser who was greeted by her white friend put it at $436,000. It sold, five months later, for $447,000.
The $36,000 difference was striking enough that Salmon-Davis’ appraisals became a centerpiece of an art installation and an exhibit in the ongoing debate over the persistent underappraisal of properties in minority neighborhoods.
Now it’s the subject of a housing discrimination complaint filed by the Fair Housing Partnership of Greater Pittsburgh [FHP] with the federal Department of Housing and Urban Development [HUD]. The complaint accuses the Edgewood-based appraisal firm Ditio Inc. of “devaluation” of the house “due to it being inhabited by a readily observable Black family.”
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