The National Fair Housing Alliance Applauds PAVE’s New Initiatives to Promote Fair Home Valuations
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 2, 2023
Contact: Izzy Woodruff | 202-898-1661 | iwoodruff@nationalfairhousing.org
The National Fair Housing Alliance Applauds PAVE’s New Initiatives to Promote Fair Home Valuations
Washington, D.C. — The National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) applauds the Property Appraisal and Valuation Equity (PAVE) Task Force for releasing four critically-important initiatives to promote fair and consistent home appraisals and valuations.
First, following a robust proposal by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB), six of the PAVE Task Force agencies will issue a proposed rule to set quality control standards for Automated Valuation Models (AVMs), including the addition of a nondiscrimination standard.
“We applaud the federal financial regulators for developing standards that can help ensure that AVMs are unbiased and transparent,” said Lisa Rice, President and CEO of NFHA. “Last year, NFHA and other leading civil rights, consumer, and technology advocates urged regulators to promote fairness in AVMs. We are pleased that the regulators have taken this bold step to help ensure that valuation models are safe, sound, and fair. We know that technology is the new civil rights frontier. That means people who build models and algorithmic systems must be intentional about designing technologies that don’t harm people and communities but, rather, help them access critical services and opportunities to build intergenerational wealth.”
Second, building on the leadership from the Federal Housing Administration’s (FHA) proposal, several of the PAVE Task Force agencies will promote standardized processes for consumers to seek a Reconsideration of Value (ROV) when a home appraisal does not seem accurate.
“The PAVE Task Force agencies’ action is an important step in empowering consumers and promoting fair appraisals,” said Nikitra Bailey, NFHA’s Executive Vice President. “Recently, NFHA and other leading civil rights and consumer advocates provided feedback to FHA to further protect consumers during the Reconsideration of Value process and urged FHA to work with the other PAVE Task Force agencies to issue consistent, industry-wide guidance. We applaud the federal financial regulators and the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) for joining FHA in the ROV initiative. We also urge the U.S. Departments of Agriculture (USDA) and Veterans Affairs (VA) to soon follow suit.”
Third, in furtherance of FHFA’s groundbreaking initiative to release to the public aggregate statistics from the Uniform Appraisal Dataset (UAD) along with user-friendly analytical tools, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) is committing to make its FHA appraisal data available to the public, which will result in a more comprehensive picture of the housing market.
“We commend Secretary Fudge and Director Thompson for the momentous decision to share these appraisal data and tools with the public,” said Ms. Rice. “This was one of the key recommendations from the NFHA Consortium report on appraisal bias. Like Home Mortgage Disclosure Act (HMDA) data, this information can revolutionize our understanding of the appraisal process and help develop better compliance systems to prevent harm to consumers and communities of color. Additionally, we look forward to working with HUD and FHFA to explore additional data releases at the loan level to help us fully understand appraisal bias.”
Finally, to address the barriers to entry to the appraisal profession, the PAVE Task Force will publish a dashboard showing the requirements that states impose in addition to the requirements imposed by The Appraisal Foundation.
“We appreciate the efforts of the PAVE Task Force to enhance transparency regarding the professional appraiser criteria,” said Ms. Bailey. “However, as recently noted in the hearing before the Appraisal Subcommittee, the appraisal profession is dead last in diversity with a homogeneous workforce that is 97% White and 70% male. More must be done to ensure that women and people of color have a fair opportunity to enter the profession as their backgrounds and experiences can enhance fairness in the appraisal process.”
“An appraisal has the power to determine the value of a consumer’s most important financial asset, which can hold the key to determining whether the consumer can purchase a permanent home rather than rent, access credit on reasonable terms, and build wealth for generations to come,” said Ms. Rice. “However, numerous news stories as well as research by FHFA, Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, Drs. Junia Howell and Elizabeth Korver-Glenn, the Brookings Institution, and NFHA have documented the serious and systemic problem of appraisal bias for consumers and communities of color. Appraisal bias exacerbates the large and growing Black-White racial wealth gap by causing Black families to get lower valuations. We applaud the PAVE Task Force for yesterday’s announcements and urge the agencies to continue to move forward on this important issue.”
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The National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA) is the country’s only national civil rights organization dedicated solely to eliminating all forms of housing and lending discrimination and ensuring equal opportunities for all people. As the trade association for over 170 fair housing and justice-centered organizations and individuals throughout the U.S. and its territories, NFHA works to dismantle longstanding barriers to equity and build diverse, inclusive, well-resourced communities.