Perched on a hill overlooking the Atlantic Ocean, the Virginia Beach condo was just what Dr. Raven Baxter wanted. There was a marble fireplace, a private foyer, and details like moldings and paneling in the three bedrooms and three bathrooms.
At $749,000, it was also within her budget. She offered the asking price, which was accepted, and sent an advance payment. And then, when she was in escrow earlier this month, her realtor called her late on the night of May 17, Friday, with bad news.
The seller wanted to back out of the deal.
Why? “You could hear the fear and disbelief in his voice,” Dr. Baxter said, recalling what her broker told her afterward. “He said, ‘I don’t know how to tell you this, but she doesn’t want to sell your home and it’s because you’re black.’
The seller, Jane Walker, 84, is white.
Ms. Walker did not respond to requests for comment. Bill Loftis, broker for Dr Baxter, said: “We have no comment on this matter as there is nothing we can do to put our clients at risk [sic] deal.”
The situation came to light a few hours later when Dr. Baxter, 30, a molecular biologist and science communicator who runs the website Dr. Raven the Science Maven, shared what happened in a post on X. Her public broadcasting to 163,000 followers and others drew attention to the biases that continue to plague the housing industry and the laws that are supposed to prohibit discrimination, even though Dr. Baxter took steps to eventually go ahead and buy the apartment.
Two federal laws — the Fair Housing Act of 1968 and the much older Civil Rights Act of 1866 — prohibit both home sellers and their real estate agents from discriminating during the sale of a home. But more than 50 years after redlining was banned, racial discrimination remains a problem, housing advocates say. A years-long undercover investigation by the National Alliance for Fair Housing, a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit coalition of housing organizations, found that 87 percent of real estate agents engaged in racial steering by choosing to show their clients homes only in neighborhoods, where most of the neighbors are of their same race. Agents also refused to work with black buyers and showed black and Hispanic buyers fewer homes than white buyers.
Following the recommendation of commenters on her social media post, Dr. Baxter filed a discrimination claim with the Virginia Fair Housing Office and the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. She also contacted a civil rights attorney.
“If I hadn’t gone on Twitter and got help from people who knew what they were doing, I would have been panicking all weekend,” Dr Baxter said. “I was buying a house for the first time. I knew my civil rights were being violated. I knew something illegal was going on, but no one knew what to do.”
“I’m falling back in my chair”
Dr. Baxter, who works remotely for Mount Sinai Hospital in New York, currently shares a rented apartment in Alexandria, Va., with her boyfriend, Dr. Ronald Gamble Jr., 35, a theoretical astrophysicist. After her divorce two years ago, she was eager to own a home, and Dr. Gamble encouraged her to find a house near the beach, which had long been her dream. He pledged to split his time between the new house and Washington, D.C., where he works at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center.
Dr. Baxter first saw the Virginia Beach condo listing in early May on Zillow and contacted agent Wayne Miller, who offered to visit it for her and take a tour via FaceTime.
Dr. Baxter kept his camera off while Mr. Miller, who is white, toured the home with Ms. Walker’s agent as one of the guides. The virtual tour was enough for Dr. Baxter to jump in with an offer.
“This is a classic home with lots of character. It is absolutely beautiful and you can walk to the beach. It was like stealing,” she said. “Basically, I’m making an unprecedented offer.”
Two weeks later, with the home sale in escrow and the home inspection on the same day, Dr. Baxter and Dr. Gamble made the three-hour drive to Virginia Beach to see the house in person for the first time. Ms. Walker arrived as the couple was leaving, and Ms. Walker’s agent, Susan Pender of Berkshire Hathaway RW Towne Realty, introduced the seller to the buyer.
Shortly after Dr. Baxter and Dr. Gamble moved away from the home, Ms. Walker informed her agent that she did not wish to sell her home to a person who was black and wished to rescind the sale, according to the timeline compiled by Mr. Miller and shared with The New York Times by Dr. Baxter. Mr. Miller declined to comment, and Ms. Pender did not respond to multiple requests for comment.
But what followed, according to Dr. Baxter and Dr. Gamble, and supported by Mr. Miller’s narrated, written timeline, was a series of frantic actions by real estate agents on both sides focused on saving the deal for the home .
Mrs. Walker’s agent called Mr. Miller to say that Mrs. Walker wanted out of the sale of the home. Mr. Miller, in turn, called Mr. Loftis, who is the supervising broker for 757 Realty, where Mr. Miller is an agent, to ask for guidance.
As Dr. Baxter was getting ready for bed at a Virginia Beach hotel later that evening, she received the phone call from Mr. Loftis.
She put the phone on speaker so that Dr. Gamble, who was working on his research in the hotel room at the time of the call, could hear the conversation.
“I fell back in my chair,” Dr. Gamble said. “I couldn’t believe what I heard. Well after the civil rights movement, after Covid, after George Floyd, one would think that society still doesn’t think this way. But in 2024, they still are.”
In a flurry of emails and calls over the next 24 hours that were received and recorded by Dr. Baxter and reviewed by The New York Times, Mr. Miller and Mr. Loftis expressed shock at the turn of events and sympathy for Dr. Baxter. They also assured her that the sale of the home would go ahead despite the seller’s wishes.
They did not immediately offer guidance on how Dr. Baxter could legally defend himself or file a discrimination complaint under the Fair Housing Act. Representatives from both HUD and the National Fair Housing Alliance advised that this should have been their first step.
Dr Baxter took to social media shortly after midnight on Saturday. She was defiant, ending her post with, “Honey, I’m either buying your house or I’m buying your block. CHOOSE ONE.”
“We’ve dealt with it”
Hours later, Mr Loftis wrote in an email to Dr Baxter. “It was unfortunate that the seller took his position to bring the Race [sic] in the process,” he wrote. “Looks like the seller’s kids managed to turn her around. While this was an annoying issue, we hope your purchase is back on track.”
Mr Miller called Dr Baxter, who said he was panicking about losing the home. In that conversation, he encouraged her to sign an inspection contingency removal addendum, releasing the seller from any obligation to make repairs to the home, even though the home inspection revealed an air conditioning system that was more than 30 years old and in need of an upgrade . Two days later, at Mr. Loftis’ direction, Mr. Miller sent Dr. Baxter an email with a link to the Virginia Fair Housing Complaint Form.
In an email, Jay Mitchell, supervising broker at Berkshire Hathaway RW Towne Realty, wrote that neither party had backed out of the transaction. “As a company, we condemn any form of discrimination, regardless of source or purpose. All our agents and staff are fully trained to be aware of discrimination in its many forms,” he said. He declined to answer further questions.
A spokesman for Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices, the residential real estate firm owned by Warren E. Buffett’s Berkshire Hathaway Energy, said RW Towne Realty is an independently owned and operated company that has licensed only the Berkshire Hathaway name.
“Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices and its parent company, HomeServices of America, strictly adhere to the Fair Housing Act and do not tolerate discrimination of any nature,” she added.
Shortly after The New York Times contacted Mr. Mitchell, Dr. Baxter received an email from Barbara Walcott, chief executive of Berkshire Hathaway RW Towne Realty.
“In light of the actions of our terribly misguided seller, I feel compelled to send you this email,” she wrote. “Please be assured that this person’s behavior is not something that is tolerated by Berkshire Hathaway RW Towne Realty, Susan Pender, or anyone in our organization or area.”
When reached by phone and asked how Berkshire Hathaway RW Towne Realty did not tolerate the seller’s actions, Ms. Walcott said, “We’ve dealt with it. All you need to know is that it was fixed the next day,” and declined to answer further questions.
The sale of Dr. Baxter’s home remains poised to close later this summer. But even if the deal goes through, her rights under the Fair Housing Act are still potentially violated, said Brenda Castaneda, deputy director of advocacy for HOME of VA, a nonprofit that helps Virginians who feel that they experienced housing discrimination. Real estate agents are required by law not to discriminate, which means they must inform sellers who insist on acting with bias that they will not represent them and withdraw from a sale if the seller does not agree. But there are other ways in which discrimination can manifest itself.
“I don’t know if you can cure discrimination just by changing your mind and going through with the deal,” Ms. Castaneda said, adding that the actions of real estate agents on both sides could also be a violation. “There may be damages suffered by that person because they suffered the loss of their civil rights and the suffering of a discriminatory statement made to them.”
She added: “Dr. Baxter was harmed whether or not the transaction went through. We just want this to be a wake-up call for people.”
