A Black couple is now taking legal action after their home appraisal increased almost $300,000 due to their race. Nathan Connolly and Shani Mott filed the housing discrimination lawsuit in Maryland District Court last week about according to the New York Times.

This happened about a year they applied to refinance their mortgage with loanDepot. Connolly, a professor at John Hopkins University says he and his wife brought the Baltimore home for $450,000 in 2017. The couple has completed renovations worth more than $35,000.

Baltimore home values have increased 42 percent over the past five years, which is why the couple was shocked to learn Maryland-based 20/20 Valuations valued their home at $472,000. This caused the mortgage lender loanDepot  to deny the pair’s refinance loan.

Connolly and Mott says they challenged the appraisal, however, the loan officer stopped responding to their calls. The initial inspection was done by 20/20 Valuations owner Shane Lanham in June of 2021.

“Dr. Connolly, Dr. Mott, and their three children were home during the visit, and their house was also filled with family photos, children’s drawings of figures with dark skin, a poster for the film Black Panther and literature by Black authors,” the lawsuit read. “It would have been obvious to anyone visiting that the home belonged to a Black family.”

Months after the initial appraisal, Connolly and Mott reapplied for a loan, however, attempted what the suit refers to as “whitewashing experiment,” removing indicators their race and giving the impression a white family resided there. “They cleared their bookshelves of works by Black authors. They asked white friends to share family photos and placed those in picture frames around the house; on their walls, they hung art bought at Ikea that showed white people,” the Times reported. The couple also recruited a white colleague to stand in for them during the appraisal.

Once the inspection was completed, the second appraiser valued their home at $750,000. Connolly teaches the history of American redlining, the discriminatory practice in which lenders target people of color with unfair terms.

“We were clearly aware of appraisal discrimination,” Connolly said. “But to be told in so many words that our presence and the life we’ve built in our home brings the property value down? It’s an absolute gut punch.”

Read more:

Mahala A. Dickerson First Black Attorney To Prosecute ‘Equal Pay Cases’ For Women College Professors