Brokering Ties and Inequality: How White Real Estate Agents Recreate Advantage and Exclusion in Urban Housing Markets

Abstract

The real estate brokerage industry has long perpetuated overt discrimination against minority housing consumers, but we know little about how it may reproduce inequality through less overt means. In this article, I highlight real estate agents’ (REAs) reliance on social networks as key to how this “new inequality” happens. Specifically, I investigate the contextual factors that enable white agents to maintain predominantly white networks and how disparate-impact consequences for minority home buyers and sellers emerge when white agents deploy their networks in ordinary housing situations. My examination relies on one year of ethnographic research with 10 REAs and 49 in-depth interviews with REAs, home buyers, and home sellers in the Houston housing market. I begin my analysis by documenting agents’ racially stratified networks. I then unpack how agent pay structure and status as market gatekeepers supported the persistence of white agents’ white networks and constrained minority agents’ business opportunities. Finally, I show how white agents’ reliance on white networks came together with other widely shared practices to negatively affect minority home buyers and sellers, excluding them from for-sale homes and competitive customer service. I conclude by discussing the implications of my findings for mitigating housing market inequality.