In the real estate industry, it is engrained in us that home ownership is for everyone alike. If you can afford to buy a home and want to, then you deserve to. In my office, we ran into this the other week when a man came in asking for us to sell his Central Florida home as he wanted to move out of state.
The scenario went a little something like this:
A man walks in and looks at the photos of our active agents on the wall. “Good,” he says, “you don’t have any blacks working here.” He would not have worked with us if we had any minorities working in our office. The conversation went on for a little while and he asked, “If you list my house, can you make sure you don’t show it to any black people?” He said he was tired of the foreigners here in Central Florida and that was why he was moving away.
There are a few federal laws that prevent anyone, and especially real estate licensees, from discriminating against others. There are two main acts. The first is the Civil Rights Act of 1968 (also known as the Fair Housing Act). This act prevents discrimination against people regardless of color, race, religion, gender and national origin. The second is the Civil Rights Act of 1988 which includes the above mentioned but adds family status and disability to the list. Not only are these practices federally illegal, they are ethically immoral as well. Discrimination is covered in the ethics guidelines of Realtors. As a Realtor, the agent follows these ethical guidelines or risks losing their standing withing the National Association of Realtors and the public at large.
There are ways that real estate professionals can get into trouble with discrimination without even realizing they have. Blockbusting, steering and red-lining are a few.
Blockbusting is where an agent places a person of minority into a community with the intention of panicing the majority race into selling their homes. This happens when there is a racial prejudice in a neighborhood and the people sell for less than market value, causing a decline in home values. This plays into the majority people’s fears and the real astate agent creates a panic scenario. Then, the agent comes in and buys the homes at the reduced value and resells them for a profit.
Steering is a form of discrimination when a real estate agent steers a person or group of people, usually minorities, into a certain area and away from other areas. Red-lining, which has more to do with lenders, is similar to steering. It is the act of denying financing and services to neighborhoods based on race, ethnicity, or economic status.
These are only a few of the ways that discrimination can occur and it’s not limited to real estate agents. It can include housing authorities, lenders, real estate companies, goverment agencies and more. If you are doing business in the United States and dealing with the public at large, you need to be aware of these laws and practices and not make the mistakes that so many people make, intentionally or not.
I strive to be ethical and legal in my real estate practices. I live by the rule that if it doesn’t feel right in my gut, then it’s not right and I won’t succomb to the pressures that might be put on me by an individual. I show houses in any area based on my buyer’s qualifications financially and needs and wants to buy that house.
As for the man the other week that was in our office, he left without listing his property with us. I don’t know if we will or won’t see him again but we won’t be following his rules and guidelines that he would like to impose on us. Instead, we will be following the Federal laws and ethical guidelines of the National Association of Realtors.
Valerie Barber 