Dr Nathan Connolly and his wife, Dr Shani Mott, have filed lawsuits against LoanDepot and the owner of 20/20 Valuations, Shane Lanham, as reported by The New York Times. This comes after Mr Connolly wanted to refinance their home last year to take advantage of historically low interest rates. 

The Mayland appraisal company, 20/20 Valuations, evaluated the Baltimore property, which was conducted by the owner, Shane Lanham, and was valued at only $472,000. This was difficult for Dr Connolly to fathom, as they had purchased the home for $450,000 in 2017 and have since installed a $5000 tankless water heater and added $35,000 of renovations and improvements to their home. Additionally, according to Zillow, home prices in Baltimore have risen by 42% in the last five years. 

Mr Connolly is a professor at John Hopkins University and is an expert on redlining in the US, with much of his research focused on the role of race in the housing market. He decided to take the matter further and get a second home appraisal. This time, however, he removed any traces that the house may belong to a black family. He removed any photos of himself, his wife, or their three kids, aged 9, 12, and 15, and pretended that the house belonged to a white professor from John Hopkins University. 

This time around, the appraisal results were quite different. Swift Home Loans, which partnered with Rocket Mortgage, valued the home at $750,000, which is $278,000 more than the initial appraisal. This left little doubt that Mr Connolly and his wife were subject to racial discrimination. The official complaint reads, “Dr. Connolly, Dr. Mott, and their three children were home during the visit, and their house was also filled with family photos, children’s drawings of figures with dark skin, a poster for the film Black Panther and literature by Black authors. It would have been obvious to anyone visiting that the home belonged to a Black family”. 

The complaint was filed on August 15th at The Maryland District Court. Shane Lanham was reached on the phone a day later but has since refused to comment. Christian Jorgensen, a lending office at LoanDepot, who was their main point of contact, has also been contacted and challenged on the initial appraisal. He, too, has refused to comment any further on the matter. 

John Relman, a managing partner of Relman Colfax, the law firm representing Dr. Connolly and Dr. Mott, said: “Appraisal discrimination is insidious because it’s so nuanced. But what’s unique about this case is it’s not a typical redlining case. You can’t get more accomplished than these two individuals. They have done everything the market told them to do, and they invested in a community where everyone else had the benefit of rising real estate values. And yet they were still discriminated against.”