The soft discriminatory issues at play, she said, are harder to pin down than clearer forms of bias in real estate and rely more on unconscious than explicit bias. ![]() ![]() When Liz Brent, the broker and owner of Go Brent, who works in Maryland and Washington DC, first began seeing buyers writing letters in the early 2000’s, it didn’t faze her.īut over the past five years, as the market grew more competitive and she saw many more letters with photographs of the potential buyers, she began to see them as a way for buyers to signal personal attributes.”I call them ‘pick me’ letters,” said Brent. “It’s a boilerplate offer and they don’t feel like they have a lot of control in the process, I get why they want to write a letter to find common ground,” she said.īut she tells her buyers to spend more time writing an offer, not a letter. Viola said she feels for the buyers who want to snag a seller’s attention. You can talk about that kind of personal information, but you can’t do it in a real estate contract.” “These are protected classes in the Fair Housing Act. “Right there you have information about family status, religion and a possible disability,” Viola said. I can imagine the kids running down the stairs on Christmas morning.” We love that the home has a first floor bedroom for my mother, who lives with us. Liz Brent, the broker and owner of Go BrentĪ buyer may write a letter to the seller that says: “This is my dream home and I’m excited to live there with my husband and our two young children. Sometimes on their wedding day, or with one or two kids and their dog.” It was almost always white, heterosexual couples. When I started to collect the letters and the pictures, it became clear they all came from a place of privilege. “But writing a love letter is not going to get you the house and you’re putting that seller in a position that they could be violating Fair Housing laws.” “Typically, a letter like this is telling the seller who is going to live in the home and how they are going to live in it,” said Francine Viola, a broker with Coldwell Banker Evergreen Olympic Realty in Olympia, Washington. And these letters can be full of those kinds of details. While some agents say the tactic is a tried and true way to win a bidding war, other agents, following recent guidance from NAR, won’t deliver or accept love letters anymore.Īccording to the federal Fair Housing Act, it is illegal to discriminate in the sale of housing because of race, color, national origin, religion, sex, familial status, and disability. How this star swimmer became a successful entrepreneurīut these letters can present problems, according to the National Association of Realtors, raising fair housing concerns.There aren’t enough women in the C-suite.By 2040, more than half of new cars will be electric.
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