“I definitely have experienced appraisal bias here in Newark,” said Vivian Cox Fraser. The CEO of the Urban League of Essex County said she has seen homes in predominantly Black neighborhoods get lowball appraisals versus comparable houses in mostly white neighborhoods. National studies have backed that up.
“Your appraisal might be less simply because you’re Black. And that’s absurd. That shouldn’t be what is happening. That is racism at its core,” says Henal Patel, director of the Democracy and Justice Program at the New Jersey Institute for Social Justice.