Hey, I am not an attorney and I certainly don't pretend to interpret what a law/rule means, but this just sounds really wrong to me and goes against everything I was taught about fair housing. In my opinion this is steering, but you can read what I just read and form your own opinions.
The first article I read on this today was from a news organization, and every news organization I know puts their own "spin" on things and I wasn't sure that someone would actually be proposing that real estate agents steer minority buyers into non minority neighborhoods, but I dug further and read the speech and I'll be waiting to see what the "clear definition of what it means to affirmatively further fair housing;", but I read the ENTIRE speech and I have to agree with the take that I first read on the news organization that I will not mention, but it sounds like they are saying they will "punish" agents who don't steer minorities to non minority neighborhoods.
You can read the entire speech for yourself here
Now let me say two things.... I don't KNOW the race of people who live in the neighboring homes of homes in our MLS. That data isn't in the MLS and I don't ask the listing agent and/or the homeowner. So how am I to know if a neighborhood is "mostly white". Am I supposed to go sit and see who gets off the school bus or comes home from work? And second, I thought steering was illegal. Isn't this very thing what was called block busting in the 70s? Wasn't this already defined as a fair housing violation.
Frankly the only discrimination I use is not putting people who refuse to get pre-qualified in my car and showing them the homes they want to see. I've discovered through trial and error that is a waste of everyone's time and money. But I let my buyers choose the homes they are qualified financially to see and I make appointments for those homes with NO thought to the race make up of the neighborhood. Now they are talking about brining a new rule to "affirmatively further fair housing". Pfffft. I don't need a new rule for that. The rules we have in place that make discrimination illegal seem perfectly fine to me. My office even addresses it in our policy manual. We don't steer, we don't know or care the racial makeup of any given neighborhood and we think affirmative action for real estate agents is the stupidest idea we've heard in years.
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