Equal Housing Opportunity

As Realtors, we pledge to do business in accordance with the Federal Fair Housing Law:  It is illegal to discriminate against any person because of race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status or national origin.  (Iowa just went one step further and added sexual orientation and gender preference to protected classes.)  So, when I, the buyer's agent called to tell the listing agent that I had an offer for the property, the response was, "do your buyers have any children?  My clients will ask because the neighbors will want to know and they really love the neighbors."   Well, my buyers may or may not have children and they may or may not be two-legged or four legged (or even three legged) but my response to the listing agent was "I thought that we believed in Equal Housing Opportunity?"  "Oh!  I'll have to remind my sellers of that."

The point here is that this question is just as wrong as asking about any of the protected classes.  Just because it was about children, and therefore not as offensive, didn't make it wrong.  It's easy to forget and hard to remember that in the interest of protecting our clients we still have to make sure we keep in mind that discrimination comes in many forms.  You would think in this market that what the sellers care about is whether the buyers can get financing, but you never know what goes through their heads.  On the flip side, we buyers' agents have to be equally careful that we don't assume something silly like a single person won't like it in a family neighborhood.