The Racial Gap in Home Appraisals Is Widening, US Data Shows

A Black family looking to sell their home has it appraised. The homeowners then remove all family and friends photos and has a white friend pretend to be the owner. A second appraisal values the house for thousands of dollars more than the original assessment.

This kind of racial bias in the housing appraisal profession has become so frequent it has become more commonly known as the appraisal gap. But it was just on Oct. 24 that the public became able to check for this discrimination themselves. On that date, the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) released a first-of-its-kind file, the Uniform Appraisal Data Set, which offers the ...