well, that's depressing.

[kodalai]

Just heard from my sister that the realtors just lowered the value estimate of my parents' house by about $75,000. Sucks.

It's a really nice house. Four bedrooms, four bathrooms, seperate living room, dining room, and kitchen, full basement, huge bay windows, large lawn full of valuable plants, in a scenic, quiet neighborhood. Admittedly the color scheme of the interior is terrible, but they're working on that; new floors went in a while ago, and new walls and curtains are all that remain.

There's really only one thing it doesn't have.

White neighbors.

Comments

[girl-starfish.livejournal.com]

Does this mean you'll be supporting your parents in their old age?

[kodalai.livejournal.com]

Heck no. I'm a liberal arts major, you think I have that kinda money?

[girl-starfish.livejournal.com]

Should have known better. By the way, just left a present for you on my journal.

[kodalai.livejournal.com]

Present for me! <3

[sharona1x2.livejournal.com]

I didn't realize that a realtor could lower the value of a house because of the race of the neighbors. Can't they fight that somehow?

[kodalai.livejournal.com]

Not if there's no way to prove that's why they lowered it.

[suzu.livejournal.com]

Did they do a comparative market analysis on your parent's house? Meaning, take 3 or four similar houses that have sold recently, in similar neighborhoods, and compare what they sold for and base your parents house price on that? That's what they're *supposed* to do. Also, if your parents don't want that price drop, it shouldn't have been dropped. The realtors do *not* set the prices, no matter what they claim.

[diatomacearth.livejournal.com]

My parents want to sell the house. They could insist on a higher price if they wanted to. And then they'd sit around for five years waiting for someone else who can afford it who thinks that an integrated neighborhood is a bonus, not the social equivalent of a flood zone. After all, they got the same price break when they moved in--took them a while to figure out why such a fabulous house was going so cheaply, but they figured it out. The reason it's a disappointment is that nothing has changed in the twenty years they've lived here.

[suzu.livejournal.com]

Yeah, been there, done that. It's painful when you know it's worth so much more and you know you aren't going to get it. Hurts even worse if there's an emotional attachment involved. People should pay what it's worth to live where your memories are. :-p

[diatomacearth.livejournal.com]

It's not the realtors fault. This is market reality. They can price the house at whatever the hell they want, but it won't sell if potential buyers think that's too much to pay for a house in a black neighborhood. This is not the case of racist realtors, this is realtors who've learned the hard way that the market is racist (did I mention that our real estate agent is Asian and local to the area?).

[(Anonymous)]

The realtors didn't "lower the value": they lowered their estimate of what buyers would be willing to pay for it. One group from the realty office assessed it on the basis of size, features and what similar houses in the area (i.e., Cheltenham, Jenkintown and Abington) have been selling for. But several others had recent experience in trying to sell similar houses IN THIS NEIGHBORHOOD, and their estimates ran $50 - 75,000 less. It's obvious that racism is at work; but it's worked out quietly, in the dark, in realtors' confidential advice to buyers and in the fears that course through potential buyers' minds, safely beyond the pursuit of any laws -- you just mysteriously get no offers for months at a time unless you lower the price enough that it becomes a "steal." Realtors protect themselves by speaking in code: they did not say "because it's an integrated neighborhood (and yes, there have been a steady supply of new whites moving into the neighborhood over the last two decades, even if they remain a minority);" instead, they said "they don't sell well in this neighborhood" -- you can't impute racism to a statement of fact.

It's also FIVE bedrooms, a family room & the full basement has more square footage than our first house. And the neighborhood scenery is so spectacular that it once attracted such American movers and shakers as Jay Cooke, Henry Stetson, Cyrus Curtis and John Wanamaker (as well as a few millionaires of only local fame) to build opulent mansions here. The neighbors are surgeons, engineers, small businessmen, children of celebrity athletes (and a lot more of the same ilk that I just don't know). But not all of them are lily-white; and in America that apparently is still what counts.

Daddy

[kodalai.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I know -- I'm not blaming the realtors, only the reality of, well, realty.