A Marin County couple settled their racial discrimination lawsuit with a local real estate appraiser out of court.
While all parties are allegedly ready to move on, the wife maintains her family was negatively impacted financially because the company gave them an “unfair appraisal” three years ago.
An African-American couple, Paul Austin and his wife Tenisha Tate-Austin have settled their 2021 lawsuit with appraiser Janette Miller, Miller and Perotti Real Estate Appraisals in San Rafael and AMC Links LLC, an appraisal management company in Utah, the Mercury News reports.
Joining the Austins is the Fair Housing Advocates of Northern California.
According to the lawsuit obtained by Atlanta Black Star, the Austins purchased their home in 2016 for their family. They invested thousands of dollars in renovations to increase “the square footage of the house” and implement several upgrades to features throughout the property. Four years later, the couple sought to refinance the mortgage on their home, and their mortgage broker hired Miller through AMC Links LLC to complete the necessary inspection of the house needed for the refinancing.
After her inspection, Miller reported that the home’s market value was $995,000.
This caused the Austins alarm. In 2019, during a previous mortgage refinancing, the market value was actually $455,000 more. They returned to AMC Links and asked them to send a different person to appraise the home. For this appraisal, the couple prepared by removing “evidence of their racial identities inside their house” and “asking a white friend to pose as the homeowner” for the second appraiser. The complaint says, “This different appraiser arrived at a value of $1,482,500 – nearly half a million dollars higher than Miller’s estimated value.”
The couple believes race came into play for Miller, contending she “took into account the Austins’ race – Black – and the current and historical…
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