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Erica Parker she always told her two daughters to be “Black and Proud,” but she had to hide her family’s ethnic background so that her home could be valued.
The Cincinnati Askr reports that Parker decorated her daughters’ rooms with drawings of black superheroes and pillows with the words “Black Queen” and “Black Magic Girl.” That’s why the upcoming conversation she had to have with her daughters was so difficult.
Parker tried to hold back tears as she removed every piece of Black art from their home and turned the pillows over to hide all the elements of their Blackness.
“Essentially, I told them to dull your black when all I once told them was to be black and proud,” Parker told the paper. “It’s a mixed message to give a 6-year-old and a 3-year-old.”
The difficult conversation Parker had to have with his eldest daughter was one she wasn’t ready to have either.
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“I didn’t want to break their innocence,” she said. “Growing up in Black, you already have so many things to deal with, and they don’t have to feel so young. I was trying to be structured how I was going to tell them, but this situation took that away from me.”
Parker says she listed her home in March after seeing how fast homes were selling in her neighborhood. Then they talked to their broker, Amy Goodman, and posted their house on Facebook.
In response, Parker said she received a series of messages from buyers and arranged a meeting with a potential buyer on the same day the post went up.
The buyer subsequently loved the home in its original unedited condition and received an offer in the low range of $ 500,000.
Parker and her husband Aaron they were excited and began planning their relocation.
It is reported that then an appraiser came to inspect the two-story house with four bedrooms, three and a half bathroom with many amenities and asked questions on this issue. The following week, Goodman received a phone call from a buyer’s broker.
“They reached a little over $ 40,000. I immediately realized that something was wrong,” Goodman told Inquirer.
Parkers initially thought it was just a mistake, but then received a copy of the assessment, which they said was full of mistakes, including the age of the home, and that no updates were made.
In response, Parkers and their broker contacted the appraiser and showed him the mistakes. When he refused to correct his assessment, they turned to the bank to make a new one.
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“Another evaluator didn’t come out. All they did was send him to a field evaluator who had just reviewed the current evaluation as it was. Basically, it was as if Erica and I were colleagues, I was doing something wrong. she examined it and went with him, “Goodman told the paper.” The on-site appraiser confirmed that it was valid even with the errors. They admitted there were mistakes, but refused to do anything about it. ”
Parkers say they have refused to sell their home for thousands less than the offer they received.
“It’s a competitive market. We saw homes being sold for much more than the asking price. It didn’t make sense. What was so different about our house? Why were we told we had to sell for so little less?” said Aaron.
When a second appraiser came out, Erica Parker made sure to whitewash everything in her home in advance. She also made sure that Goodman, who was white, would be the only one to greet them.
A week after the second valuation, the Enquirer said it had returned nearly $ 100,000 higher than the first.
“We were so happy until we realized what had happened. It was a really dark time then,” Erika said.
The second estimate was $ 557,000, which is $ 92,000 higher than the original.
Parkers said their fears of racial discrimination were confirmed and they realized they could easily lose nearly $ 100,000 in their home.
“Being black in America is tiring,” he said. Erica Parker. “You have to understand what you’re going to fight, because if you fight everything, you’ll fight every day.”
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