In 2020, Francesca Cheroutes decided to make some improvements to her six-bedroom duplex in Denver. She installed new gutters and added new countertops and bathroom lighting.
Interest rates were falling, and home values were climbing in her neighborhood at that time, so she decided to refinance her mortgage. After all, a previous appraisal on the property, completed less than a year prior, had valued it at $860,000. She lives in a three-bedroom home on one side of the duplex; she rents out the other side. Surely, the property was worth more with the upgrades, she thought.
To her shock, an appraiser who assessed the duplex in January 2021 came up with a new number: $640,000 — effectively slashing its value by 25 percent.
A lawyer who specialized in labor law and discrimination, Ms. Cheroutes, who is Black, suspected racial bias. “To think that my house is worth less because I live in it is appalling,” said Ms. Cheroutes, 54. Last week, the Justice Department filed a discrimination lawsuit against all parties involved in the valuation: Rocket Mortgage, her lender; Solidifi U.S. Inc., an appraisal management company; Maverick Appraisal Group; and the appraiser, Maksym Mykhailyna, who is white and is the chief executive of Maverick.
The Justice Department claims that Mr. Mykhailyna and Maverick “significantly undervalued Ms. Cheroutes’s home because of her race and color,” according to the lawsuit filed on Oct. 21 in U.S. District Court in Colorado.
According to the lawsuit, the appraisal was riddled with errors — he did not take note of the improvements Ms. Cheroutes had done to the property, he listed the wrong elementary school for the homes, selecting one with a much higher concentration of Black students; and he incorrectly stated that the homes did not have a fence. More critically, Mr. Mykhailyna used the value of homes located several miles away from Ms. Cheroutes’s house, in areas with significantly higher percentages of Black residents, to set a base line for his appraisal, rather than relying on homes in her own neighborhood, the Justice Department claims.