There’s a story in the NYT that someone pulled out of selling a condo to a Black professional because she’s Black. The woman who lost out on the deal has a doctorate, works for Mt Sinai in NYC, and claims her realtor told her the seller stated that’s the reason: straight-up racial discrimination.
This is weird to me for a few reasons.
One, the doctor is named “Raven,” which is bound to be either a beautiful Black woman or a sad white goth kid, right? Which of those two categories has house-buying money? It’s probably not the 15 year old going through a phase.
Two, would a realtor say this? If their seller was like, “I’m a racist! NEVER!” would the realtor even pass that message on to the buyer’s realtor? Or would they just be like, “Something suddenly came up.”
The buyer’s rep gave only limited comment to the NYT because he’s trying to save the deal. The seller’s rep did not respond to the NYT’s request for comment because she’s not an idiot; she knows nothing she says will help the situation.
To be clear - residential realtors are often advised to not even talk about schools because saying an area has ‘good schools’ can be viewed as a proxy for ‘white area’ and realtors don’t want to get sued for ‘steering.’ If someone’s touring the property and has kids and asks about schools, the modern residential broker or realtor is advised to tell them to look it up on a neutral third-party website that ranks schools.
Steering is basically when a real estate person tries to tell someone that they wouldn’t ‘fit in’ in an area. It’s like the cousin of redlining. It’s like soft-redlining which, to be clear, I think is wrong. Redlining is bad; race discrimination in real estate is wrong.
Resi realtor brokerages are so terrified of accusations of steering that they have pretty constant trainings about it. This NYT story is every resi broker’s nightmare, basically. One, that they’d be caught saying anything racial, period, because it’s such an issue in the history of the profession. Two, that if they did say something racial, even just repeating something a client said, it would end up in the goddamn New York Times.
So, knowing that, if you were the seller’s resi broker would you even say that? Even if your seller said that, would you repeat it? I don’t know if resi brokers have an ethical obligation to report that to someone but it seems like the reporting obligation wouldn’t be to a broker at a competing firm, right? Definitely go to the broker who runs the office you work for and ask them for advice…but perhaps not the guy who’s trying to get a better deal for his client at the expense of yours.
I had an RE license at one time, but worked mostly in commercial where it’s strictly business. CRE is pretty exclusively just, “What’s the cap rate?” “Can I see the last two years of your financials” etc. It’s JUST business. No one is falling in love with a warehouse and envisioning the next 30 years of their life there. No one is saying goodbye to the home they spent 10 years in. Sometimes there’s a divorce as a motivator for a transaction; usually not. And no one cares who buys the damn thing. Black, white, Asian, Hispanic - no one cares. Usually it’s a corporation. Commercial is all about, “will this pay off for me,” and if yes, a deal goes ahead.
If you are a resi broker, bless your heart, but WHY? I spent about 5 minutes at a resi brokerage after a move. It was the worst people in the world, all looking for excuses to drink on the job, and also trying to hug me all the time for some reason. You could not pay me to do residential ever, ever again. I knew it was a bad fit when they tried to assign me to a team with people I’d never met before. In commercial, you interview like 5 times and meet everyone first. That’s because it’s a real business and not a sideline for teachers and failed musicians like residential tends to be.
One interesting detail in the story is that the would-be buyer put in an offer after only taking a virtual tour. She didn’t actually walk through the home until weeks later. That detail makes me nervous; virtual tours are great, but you want to see the home in person and look for things like water damage etc before making an offer. Please do not make an offer on a place without seeing it in person: you can end up with a real lemon that way. Great views can cloud your vision about what a good RE purchase is. In fact, if you have great views by the water, you should expect that it will be difficult to get insured.
This seems like a very enthusiastic, but also very inexperienced, buyer. I think that can legitimately make a seller nervous.
I also - if you’re 84 and you’re selling the home, do you even GAF about who’s moving in? It’s not your problem anymore, right? You’re in god’s waiting room, period, at 84. Would you give that much of a shit about who’s taking your old spot in the neighborhood? I don’t get it.
If this story actually happened the way it’s being reported, that’s terrible. But there are a lot of things that seem really ‘off’ here.
I guess this could be a seller who’s SO racist they were essentially fishing for a lawsuit. And I guess there could be a realtor who’s SO naive that they worked with an openly racist seller in 2024 when that can kill your career.
Mostly I feel like something is off, here.
I read the NYT story and thought it was bullshit. Whiny bullshit.