To all the agents in the house,
I came out with a story for HousingWire this week on why there are few real estate agents of color compared to the overall U.S. population. OpenHouse readers immensely helped in offering their opinions for the story, so thank you for that.
Diagnosing why there are relatively few Black, Hispanic and Asian real estate agents was not that hard. (It has something to do with low rates of minority home-ownership, agent start-up costs, and that informal, mostly white social networks do the recruiting.)
Prescribing what should be done — and who has the power to do something — is harder, and gets to an even bigger question: Who has the power to impose change on the residential real estate economy?
The tentative answer to my own question is the National Association of Realtors. They spend more on lobbying than any other organization in the country, control most Multiple Listings Services while requiring member agents to list homes on said MLS, and provide the rubric on everything from how sales commissions are structured to the language used in sales contracts.
They even have trademarked the word "realtor."
But maybe I am assuming too much about what power the NAR holds, and underestimating brokerages including a conglomerate like Realogy, or an international force such as Keller Williams.
Or perhaps Zillow with its mammoth name-brand recognition and page views dictates the terms of engagement for agents more than any other person or company. Through Premier Agent, the Seattle company made paying for online leads a standard practice. And it's now working to make "iBuying" a mainstream plank of the real estate economy, untethered from its "We buy ugly houses" flier-on-power-line origins.
Other candidates are the U.S. Dept. of Housing and Urban Development, the Federal Reserve, or other federal or local regulators and lawmakers. But the public sector, from my limited knowledge, seems to take a back seat to the NAR in establishing industry rules, guidelines, and incentive systems.
Please let me know your thoughts on this question. I can be reached at mblake@housingwire.com.
Sincerely,
Matthew Blake
Senior Real Estate Reporter
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