The way the US property market works just completely blows my mind. Even with federal regulation there is a lot of racism inherently built into the system. Cities drain money from predominantly black neighborhoods by not repairing or updating infrastructure. Banks drain money from those neighborhoods by denying loans and undervaluing property. No surprise the buyer got an appraisal of $0.
It's not racism unless you subscribe to highly inclusive definitions of racism. It's just that government is mostly made up of people who are upper middle class or higher and government reflects their values so development they consider "nice" is facilitated and regulatory roadblocks are added to development they are suspect of.
If you told HN that some random dude buying a bunch of dilapidated buildings and make them into apartments and commercial real estate people would basically assume you're dealing with a slum lord. These are the kinds of assumptions that government codifies. They don't care that you're black or brown or white. You're just a name on a form to them. What they care about is that your proposed development meets X, Y and Z which triggers scrutiny A B and C (which was all originally passed to curtail slum lords back when the municipality got rich on a boom of local industry 0-70yr ago and could afford to drive them out).
And of course the bank knows all this and they figure that into their calculations when they're deciding whether or not to lend to you and what interest rate you'll get.
> government is mostly made up of people who are upper middle class or higher
Go to your city hall or their website and see if they have an organizational chart. For some of us one thing will overwhelmingly stick out. For others it's just business as usual.
> the municipality got rich on a boom of local industry 0-70yr ago and could afford to drive them out
This did not happen. Local industry collapsed and ushered in slumlords. City living has only started trending up within the last 2 decades.
Banks still rely on an outdated, and I would say racist, method of property valuation called "comps". The value of the property around you determines the value of the property you are buying. If you are trying to rehabilitate a distressed neighborhood you can't use that method. You'll end up with situations like this. Needing hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans meanwhile the buildings around you are valued at $0.
Of course you don't have to take my word for it. HUD has a whole enforcement arm targeting racial discrimination in banking [0].
>Go to your city hall or their website and see if they have an organizational chart. For some of us one thing will overwhelmingly stick out. For others it's just business as usual.
I assume you mean that they're all white. Which isn't true at all. Birmingham, as an example, has had black mayors for 40+ years now. Most of the cities in the south are like that. Whites fled to the surrounding suburbs leaving political power to the Blacks that remained.
