Making Real Estate Markets: The Co-Production of Race and Property Value in Early 20th Century Appraisal Science

Analysing the standardisation of appraisal alongside the development of modern real estate markets in the early 20^th century, this article demonstrates that the construction of a racialised proper(tied) economic subjectivity was pivotal for realtors’ ability to secure legitimacy and profit as a burgeoning profession. Appraisal embedded racial logics within real estate markets such that their routine functioning could generate the submarket differentiation necessary for the realisation of class-monopoly rent. This study’s focus on appraisal before federal redlining addresses key lacunae in the historiography of segregation by foregrounding markets’ historical function as infrastructures that produce and spatialise the social difference crucial for profit in real estate. This article also seeks to inform engagements with contemporary processes of land speculation, commodification, and financialisation shaping US cities by advocating attention to the specific mechanisms that constitute race as a modality for the appropriation of surplus by real estate capital.