Black homeownership yields less wealth because white buyers’ choices set appreciation rates.

Evidence

John’s experiences highlight a key difference in how homeownership affects whites and blacks: When blacks become homeowners, we get less wealth largely due to the personal choices of white homebuyers. Numerous studies show when too many of your neighbors are black, your home will not appreciate the way it would if you lived in an all-white neighborhood, and you may lose money when you sell, just as John did on his Feldwood Road property. When your neighbors are virtually all white, you are most likely to make tax-free money when you sell your home—again, just as John probably would, based on the rising value of his Candler Park home. — Dorothy A. Brown, The Whiteness of Wealth, 208

Categorization

• XREF: The ‘appreciation gap’ mechanism set up here is the scaffold for the book’s core tax-provision argument in later chapters.