Avoiding fair housing violations

Pennsylvania Realtors® were recently reminded of the importance of fair housing compliance when testing in Allentown found that 73 percent of real estate professionals showed some sort of discriminatory behaviors towards minority homebuyers.  That’s not good.

Now maybe you’re thinking to yourself “that’s just them – nobody does that around here.”

Perhaps, but unlikely.

HUD and its state/local agency partners filed 9,350 fair housing complaints in 2011 – the first time since 2005 that there were fewer than 10,000 complaints in a year.  That number goes up to nearly 28,000 when you include the complaints filed by private housing organizations.  And that’s just the formal complaints that get filed – there’s no way to know how many situations are resolved before that stage.

Is it really a problem here in Pennsylvania?  In a word: Yes.  A 2009 report on testing in the five counties around Philadelphia showed likely racial/ethnic discrimination in 57 percent of the tests conducted on real estate agents.  On the other side of the state, testing in Pittsburgh showed likely discrimination against deaf testers by 28 percent of landlords.  And it doesn’t take much to find examples of fair housing cases filed in the state.

So how do you cut down your possible exposure to fair housing violations?  There are lots of rules and all sorts of delicate nuance for handling various scenarios, but for this article let’s just talk about one tip that will help avoid problems in your advertising and property selection:

“It’s the Property, Stupid”

Does a house care if it’s purchased by a Muslim family with three disabled children? No – so why do you?

Does an apartment care that it’s lived in by a retired gay couple from Costa Rica? No – so why do you?

One of the quickest ways to a fair housing violation is to publish your discriminatory intent right up front.  Ads that say things like “Over 21” or “Great for retirees and empty nesters” are huge red flags for possible violations, and housing organizations sometimes pick their testing subjects simply by scanning ads in a particular market.

Instead of trying to guess what sorts of people might be happy in a property, simply list the attributes of the property and work to match up prospective buyers or tenants based on their stated property needs.  The less you editorialize about what you think they should want or the things that you think should matter to them, the better off you’ll be.

And once you start meeting clients, focus on their stated property needs rather than what they look like or how many car seats are in the minivan.  If a family with four kids says they want a three bedroom house in neighborhood X and they’re financially qualified, show them three bedroom homes in neighborhood X.  When you tell those buyers that “they’ll be happier with a bigger home in neighborhood Y” or that they “might be more comfortable with the neighbors in neighborhood Z” you may be lining up the crosshairs on your back.

Focus on the property and you’ll go a long way towards minimizing your chances of being caught up in a fair housing case.  After all, aside from the monetary settlements and years of legal fees, who really wants to be the subject of a newspaper article or Department of Justice news release when charges are filed or resolved?