I live in a neighborhood which back in the 1960s had formed a “Housing Committee” of the neighborhood association and insisted that they show houses to both white and black families, because they had decided that the neighborhood had become “too black” and had stopped showing it to white families. We only stayed diverse because we worked at it. There is a lot of prejudice out there - some of it conscious, some of unconscious.
Some of this stuff doesn’t even make sense? Why ask for ID? Are they going out for drinks afterward? I have no doubt that realtors steer people to areas where there are more people of the same race, but like @ucbalumnus says that may be due to their success rate of sales when they steer them there. We always assume the worst intentions but I think most realtors just want to make sales. We are quick to judge on any bit if info we get.
True in this scenario. In my market, I don’t need or want an agent to send me listings I can find on Redfin or Zillow. In a hot market, a white buyer who wanted to be taken seriously by sellers will need to be able to pass those financial hurdles.
“Steering buyers with similar financials and stated preferences, but of different races, to different neighborhoods” is illegal.
Of course it is illegal (and unethical). But something being illegal (or unethical) does not necessarily prevent people from doing it, particularly if it is unlikely that they will be caught and penalized for it. Very few real estate agents will get exposed in matched pair studies, so it is likely that real estate agents who engage in this behavior believe (probably correctly) that they will never be caught or penalized for it.
But also, to the extent that such behavior is due to real estate agents’ beliefs about buyers being racist (which are probably true to some significant extent, even though not for all individual buyers), real estate agents are not the only ones to blame for housing segregation. They can be blamed for proactively acting as buyers’ “racism valet”, but buyers’ racism still exists and would affect housing patterns even if all of the real estate agents were not racist. It is somewhat analogous to racist people calling the police on innocent people whose race they do not like; even if the police themselves are not racist, the effect is to cause the target people to experience unfriendly police encounters more often.
Smackin’ my head.
Years ago, we were “steered” to only consider a certain area in which to live (even though another area was close to dh’s employer). I don’t quite remember how it was phrased…but the implication was clear. We didn’t know the area, and since we are white, we were steered to the “better” area.
True, but look what’s happening in the study. Neither the white nor the non-white “buyers” here knew what was going on. They were led to believe that the areas they were shown were representative of what they could afford. The non-white buyers weren’t staying out of the white areas because they didn’t want to move there; they were led to believe they couldn’t afford those areas. Equally, the white buyers were not shown houses they could have afforded in the more racially mixed areas, even though they might have preferred to live in racially diverse areas. The agents were perpetuating segregation that the buyers weren’t even given a chance to reject.
“white buyers were not shown houses they could have afforded in the more racially mixed areas”
The article is focused solely on discrimination against minorities, not whites.
Which brings up the irony of an article pointing out discrimination against blacks with the key supporting argument that blacks don’t want to live near blacks. LOL
Did you read it?
Interesting to me that they found two RE firm’s agents that did not discriminate in any way. But some other offices of the same firms (Corcoran and Sothebys) did. Better office training? Luck of the agent draw? Geography?
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Would it surprise you that those in a sales and marketing type of job engage in profiling customers to make assumptions about unstated preferences, even if the individual customers do not have those assumed unstated preferences? I.e. the agents are engaging in racial profiling of buyers based on past experience with large numbers of buyers with unstated racist preferences?
Obviously, such behavior by agents is undesirable in reinforcing segregation in housing patterns (particularly when it comes to purchased housing that people tend to stay in for longer terms), but racism by agents is likely just the tip of the racism iceberg. After all, other studies found that (a) white people tend to favor more white neighborhoods while black people tend to favor mixed neighborhoods, and (b) many, perhaps most, white people are concerned about the US becoming majority non-white in the future.
Also, @Hanna has stated on these forums that white students avoid colleges where they are not in the majority. If she noticed that among students looking for colleges, it seems unlikely that agents fail to notice that among prospective house buyers. And it likely takes a very strong commitment to opposing racial segregation on the part of an agent not to accommodate assumed buyer racist preferences when trying to get the next transaction and commission.
@ucbalumnus And that’s exactly what we need – “a very strong commitment to opposing racial segregation.”
I think, imo, jmho, that some here are trying to excuse this.
Maybe you don’t want to face that prejudice exists. Maybe you haven’t heard tales from friends or associates. Or listened.
And turning this back on the minorities, as if they’re the ones at fault?
In the end, if someone chooses to buy in one area or another, that’s their choice. But “steering” occurs at the front end.
I’m afraid you need to face the sad music that we’re still a divided society.
I had a real estate agent tell me that a co-op apartment building had “too many Jews” in it. This was 2002. I asked her what she meant and she stuttered and mumbled that she thought we might not be approved by the board. Right. Somehow that wasn’t a problem in my current building.
I’m not sure why anyone would doubt the findings of this article. Discrimination happens all the time, to this day.
Unfortunately, that does not seem to exist at-large in US society, including the pool of people from whom real estate agents come from and the pool of potential house buyers.
That’s right, it doesn’t. So we roll over for it?
Blaming only the real estate agents for housing segregation appears to be an attempt to deflect the blame away from people at large (the iceberg of racism in housing patterns that real estate agent racism is merely the tip of and in some ways induced by). Easier to point fingers than the look in the mirror or at one’s friends and neighbors, etc…
Or they could have, maybe, a commitment to obeying the law. What they were doing is straight-up illegal. It is illegal to “steer” buyers. It is illegal to give worse treatment to non-white buyers.
Moreover, even if the agents were acting to satisfy the alleged racist desires of their white buyers, they were clearly not acting in the interest of the non-white buyers. They weren’t satisfying customer demand, even if they may have been satisfying white customer demand.
Your point is well taken that ending racism starts from within. But I take issue with giving anyone involved in the transaction a pass, or seeming to.
It’s as if I were ticketed for going 65 in a 40 when everyone else is going 80 but I’m the one who got pulled over. I was still speeding, and it was still wrong.