Racialized Real Estate Agency in U.S. Housing Markets: A Research Note

Abstract

Case studies have illuminated that U.S. real estate agents, as key housing market gatekeepers, continue to maintain racial residential stratification well into the twenty-first century. We use novel survey data gathered from real estate agents across the United States to descriptively explore agents’ ideas about clients of color in the housing market, as well as their practices, such as conducting business through social networks. Our findings provide evidence of the subtle and more overt ways that these ideas and practices that, when taken together, constitute what we call racialized real estate agency and contribute to ongoing racial segregation. We issue a call for future research to continue examining the ways agents’ and other gatekeepers’ ideas and practices contribute to or mitigate stratifying processes and describe the utility of such research for policy.