Richmond Memorial Health Foundation Shares Insights from the 2022 Market Value Analysis
Background
In 2021, Richmond Memorial Health Foundation (RMHF) in partnership with PlanRVA commissioned a second Market Value Analysis (MVA) of the Richmond region. The first MVA was completed in 2017 and became a vehicle through which RMHF could bring together a set of regional actors that were focused on issues impacting community health through the lens of Richmond’s complex, multi-dimensional housing market. The first MVA brought to light a number of issues that became central to RMHF’s priority of advancing racial equity.
“The MVA process set the stage for RMHF’s evolution and new Strategic Framework, encouraging us to lean into housing and the built environment as a social determinant of health and go deeper into research and data, policy and advocacy, and civic engagement. We are grateful to Ira Goldstein and the Reinvestment Fund team for their expertise and ongoing leadership.” 

Mark Constantine, RMHF President & CEO
What is the MVA?
The MVA is a creation of Reinvestment Fund’s Policy Solutions group (Policy) led by Ira Goldstein. 
It is a data-based, field-validated analysis and mapping of a community’s housing market. While the MVA includes a regional view, the analysis is done at a very small geographic scale, making it possible for the MVA’s depiction of a city’s neighborhoods to reveal the mosaic of market conditions within the community. The MVA typically relies on administrative data, which is timelier and more geographically refined than, for example, data from the US Census. And the MVA process includes field validation as well as convenings with local subject-matter experts.
 
As important as the 2017 MVA was for Richmond area efforts, RMHF sought again to use the MVA project as an organizing vehicle to facilitate a more inclusive community engagement strategy, to bring voices to the table that thus far were not generally active participants. As a part of this strategy, RMHF strived to democratize access to the data by leveling the playing field between residents and policymakers, and to further enhance RMHF’s priority of racial equity.
Richmond Area’s 2022 MVA
 
The MVA is built on a set of housing market indicators gathered, where possible, at the address-level. Those indicators are mapped and validated, and aggregated to the Census-defined block groups. The following selected headlines are from our 2022 MVA.
 
Richmond Area’s Housing Prices Remain High, Even in “Stressed” Markets. Comparisons of the Richmond area’s 2017 MVA to other communities with MVAs demonstrated that the most distressed markets in Richmond tended to have

  • high sale prices, 
  • elevated bank sales, 
  • high concentrations of subsidized rental housing 
  • and lower levels of permitting activity.

Comparing the most distressed housing market in the Richmond area from the 2017 MVA to the 2022 MVA, typical sale prices increased from $53,597 to $103,375 which represents a dramatic increase of 93%. 
Housing Price Increases Exceed Income Increases, Challenging Affordability. Housing prices, a key component of the MVA, rose dramatically from the 2017 MVA. Overall, the percent of homes selling for less than $250,000 fell from 48% to 34% in just four years between 2018 and 2021 while the percent selling for more than $450,000 rose from 15% to 21%. Rising housing prices such as this, which exceed increases in family household incomes to access affordable housing markets, show a striking decline in housing affordability for those people even with moderate incomes. 
 
If we look at current Richmond City residents, those earning below 50% of the median household income could only afford to purchase a home in a very small share of the city’s block groups, and all of those block groups were places showing significant signs of market stress. This analysis, thought of as the “geography of opportunity”asks how opportune are the places where people can afford to live. A comparison of the 2017 and 2022 MVAs show a real constriction of that opportunity, even for middle income families. Furthermore, because households of color tend to earn less income than White households, the geography of opportunity for Black and Hispanic families is far more constricted at every income level.
 
Investor Purchasing may be Limiting Opportunities for Generational Wealth Building. Recent media reports underscore the penetration of private investors in the Richmond area housing market. As part of the MVA process, home sales were categorized as owner to owner, owner to investor, investor to owner and investor to investor. In the most stressed markets, 39% of home sales were owner to owner, however, in the strongest markets (i.e., areas with relatively high sale prices, very little vacancy, higher levels of new construction, and high permitting activity), over 80% were sales of this nature. Conversely, in the most stressed markets, 25% of sales were from owners to investors compared to under 5% in the strongest markets. Implications for Black and Brown homeownership are concerning based on this data. Since home ownership has historically been the means for families to accumulate wealth and pass it from generation to generation, these statistics suggest growing racial wealth disparities.
 
Changing Dynamics Increase Risk of Displacement. Lastly, several areas of the Richmond region have experienced such extraordinary increases in home sale prices in comparison to income that some residents are at risk of financial displacement. Moreover, the ability of people of similar economic means to replace them if they choose to leave the neighborhood is diminished because price increases are so steep that only higher income people can afford to buy homes in these areas.
 
Next Steps
Now that the 2022 MVA is complete, it’s time for stakeholders to do the work to ensure that it is fully accessible and integrated into the planning and implementation of the many community-focused efforts around the region.

  • First, the MVA has found a new home at PlanRVA. Thanks to funding from Virginia Housing, the MVA will be available as an online interactive map with contextual resources and narratives to explain the data and key findings. Over the next few months, a series of map-centric, issue-focused illustrations will be created and released. 
  • Second, RMHF has committed to making the MVA and component data available to practitioner, academic, and other user-groups who can enhance their research with the MVA.
  • Third, there is a plan to develop a set of traditional and social media features of the MVA and some novel local uses that other communities with MVAs across the US have used.
  • Fourth, RMHF will support presentation and engagement opportunities around the region with groups of practitioners and policymakers for whom the MVA can be a critical tool.
  • Lastly, Reinvestment Fund is planning a Community of Practice in the southeast region in late 2022/early 2023 that will include opportunities for MVA users from across the country to collaborate on implementation successes and challenges.
Celebrating & Honoring Built Environment Work
RMHF Trustees have been on an intentional journey since 2016 to better understand and impact the social determinants of health to drive health equity for the region. We have learned that housing stability and healthy built environments significantly impact health equity for low-wealth individuals and families. As we shift our focus to General Operating Support for mission-aligned organizations, inclusive of built-environment partners, we are reflecting on key milestones in our journey:


As we continue on our journey, we express gratitude for our amazing partners for their tireless efforts. We are also incredibly grateful to Michael Smith for his programmatic leadership of RMHF’s built environment work and for his ongoing efforts as program and strategy officer.
Partners to Know
Each month we plan to highlight one or two of our FY 2023 general operating support grantee partners, with the hope that you will learn more about the great work happening in our community. 
The MWCLT seeks to develop and maintain permanently affordable homeownership opportunities for low and moderate-income households. Using the Community Land Trust (CLT) model, MWCLT creates homes that are sold to qualified buyers while retaining ownership of the land beneath the houses. These homes receive permanent subsidy that stays in the home and allows the home to be sold below market value. As an affordable alternative to renting, the CLT model allows families to build wealth through their monthly mortgage payments.
SCDHC’s mission is to use a holistic approach to create viable, thriving and sustainable communities. They achieve this by providing residential and commercial development, homeownership education and counseling, financial counseling and coaching, employment services, and supportive programs to low-income families throughout the Central Virginia region. SCDHC is one of the largest single-family non-profit housing developers in the Richmond Metro Area and has developed over 450 affordable single-family homes.
We would also like to acknowledge and honor Ira Goldstein, President of Policy Solutions, Reinvestment Fund. Through the work of the MVA and his participation on the National Advisory Board, Ira has been a long-time partner of RMHF and has personally gone above and beyond to support the Richmond community. Ira was recently honored during Pennsylvania Housing Finance Agency’s Housing Forum with the prestigious Housing Pioneer Award for his decades of leadership in the affordable housing field. Congratulations, Ira!
Other News and Updates
Earlier this year, RMHF approved several grants:

  • Grantmakers in Health (GIH), an organization committed to helping health funders learn, connect and grow.  
  • ABFE, a membership-based philanthropic organization that advocates for responsive and transformative investments in Black communities. 
  • Amandla Fund, which was created by Richmond's Black giving circles SisterFund and Ujima Legacy Fund, in partnership with the Community Foundation for a greater Richmond to support investments in the Black community and achieve economic and racial justice.
  • PlanRVA to communicate learnings from the MVA. 
  • Urban Baby Beginnings to provide support for families struggling during the infant formula shortage .

Several articles and reports that are worth a read:

GIH 40th Anniversary Video
Mark Constantine, RMHF President & CEO, was recently interviewed by Grantmakers in Health (GIH) as part of a video to celebrate their 40th anniversary.
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