How Real Estate Agents Keep Cities Segregated
Under capitalism, housing is a commodity, which means it principally exists to make rich people richer rather than meet human needs. That gap between making money and making profit distorts a whole range of life outcomes for average people — and real estate agents play a critical role in that process.
Real estate agents often convince the wealthy that certain neighborhoods with high housing prices are worth the cost, and tend to steer white homebuyers to white neighborhoods and homebuyers of color to nonwhite neighborhoods, further entrenching neighborhood race and class divides. (Unsplash)
Although the 2008 recession was triggered by the collapse of a speculative housing bubble, the housing market in New York City was back to business in record time. During the 2010s, luxury construction and condo sales soared and rents reached an all-time high. At the same time, predatory equity companies scooped up rent-stabilized buildings and pushed out working-class tenants, sparking a pushback that led to the historic rent law reforms of 2019. Now, as we enter an even more devastating recession prompted by the coronavirus pandemic, the consequences of neighborhood inequality are on stark display.
From 2012 to 2015, at the start of the real estate market’s resurgence, sociologist Max Besbris shadowed real estate agents in New York State. His recent book Upsold: Real Estate Agents, Prices, and Neighborhood Inequality examines the ways agents use identity and emotion to ensure buyers pay top dollar for their homes — and how this accelerates the segregation of New York’s neighborhoods by class and race.
Karen Narefsky
What motivated you to write Upsold?
Max Besbris
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