Zillow public relations expert Tyrone Law discusses housing market inequalities

ORLANDO, Fla. – This week on “Black Men Sundays,” host Corie Murray interviews Tyrone Law, a public relations professional who works in a senior position with Zillow and brings great insight regarding inequalities in the housing market.

Given that the millionaires we’ve had on the show all seem to point to home ownership as the No. 1 way to achieve generational wealth, Law was able to expound on that in relation to the $3 trillion racial wealth gap looming over many prospective buyers.

“Nearly half of the reason for that $3 trillion wealth gap is, you can attribute it to inequality in the housing market,” Law said, citing Zillow’s research. “It did a thought experiment. If homeownership rates between White people and Black people were equal, or home values between Black people and White people were equal, that will shrink the wealth gap by billions of dollars. So that right there just shows you how important housing is to building generational wealth.”

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According to Law, we’re in an unprecedented time, an affordability crisis, yet it’s important to recognize that everybody’s situation is unique.

“All the headlines are out there saying, ‘Oh, it’s a terrible time to buy,’ but really, the right time to buy is when it’s right for you and your personal situation, and there’s all types of resources out there. So before you should make a decision about anything — including whether it’s the right time to buy a house or anything, and I’m not a housing expert, this is just what I would do — you just do your research, but personalize it to you,” he said. “I’m saying go out there, crunch the numbers. There’s affordability calculators out there, you can talk to an agent, you can talk to a loan officer and gather all the information you can to figure out if it’s feasible for you, and there might be resources like down payment assistance and things that you haven’t even thought about that could get you there. It could be that you couldn’t qualify to buy a home right now, but listening to all the noise out there is not gonna help, you got to do research.”

Hear the full interview in Season 3, Episode 20 of “Black Men Sundays.”

Black Men Sundays talks about building generational wealth. Check out every episode in the media player below.