Reader Devin Bunten sent me a note expanding on the problems of contract-buying, redlining, and the kind of segregated housing market that characterized America through much of the 20th century:

the thread today

, with some added economics. I could/should just post it as a comment, but it's quite late for that thread I'm afraid. You mentioned in the thread that "the vast majority of these guys found themselves buying houses way beyond the appraised value." A house appraisal is only meaningful in the context of the neighborhood, and the switch from an all-white neighborhood to an all-black neighborhood would have changed the appraisal substantially -- which is of course a large part of the point.

However, that's separate than how economists think about price and value, and I think adding the econ perspective actually makes the situation worse. I'd think about it like this: in Chicago at the time, there were two fundamental housing markets: one for whites, and one for blacks.

Removing the black population from competition within the white market was a(nother) large transfer of wealth to whites: whites faced less competition for the large supply of houses, which actually kept white house prices lower than they would otherwise be.

This enabled a large number of whites to move up the ladder into the middle class. On the other hand, the legal framework, enforced by terror, that prevented blacks from moving into these neighborhoods meant two things: a small supply of houses in the "black housing market", and a large and increasing demand.

This would have kept prices quite high -- much higher than any appraised value. Any black family would be bidding not against the white speculator, but against the large number of other black families looking to get a house. Because the speculators were few and the black families were many, prices were kept quite high in these black neighborhoods. The rules you wrote about obviously kept these high prices from being realized by black sellers, as blacks so rarely came to own the homes they were paying for.