9. Protected Classes
Federal and State
• Race
• Color
• Religion
• National Origin
• Familial Status
• Handicap
• Sex
• Sexual orientation
• Gender identity
• Age
• Marital status
• Children
• Public assistance
10. Prohibited Behavior
• Steering
o The illegal practice of directing a member of a protected
class towards or away from a particular area or
neighborhood.
o Steering is often subtly and difficult to detect, homeseekers
can be unaware that their choices have been limited. Words,
phrases or actions that are intended to influence the choices
of a prospective buyer are discriminatory actions.
• Segregated Facilities
11. Prohibited Behavior
• Discriminatory Advertising
o no one can make, print or publish discriminatory ads
including those who are exempt
• Ads that contain words, phrases, symbols or visuals that
indicate a discriminatory preference or limitation.
• Ads that selectively use media, human models, logos and
locations to indicate an illegal preference or limitation
• Refusal to publish ads because of protected class.
12. Communications Decency Act and
Digital Millennium Copyright Act
• CDA
o Passive website operator
• DMCA
o No actual knowledge
o Not aware of infringement
o No financial benefit
o remove the infringing content immediately
o provides a means of notification of
infringement
13. Fair Housing
• Code of Ethics
• Article 10
Realtors® shall not deny equal professional services to any person
for reasons of race, color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status,
national origin, sexual orientation, or gender identity. Realtors®
shall not be parties to any plan or agreement to discriminate
against a person or persons on the basis of race, color, religion,
sex, handicap, familial status, national origin, sexual orientation,
or gender identity. (Amended 1/14)
Realtors®, in their real estate employment practices, shall not
discriminate against any person or persons on the basis of race,
color, religion, sex, handicap, familial status, national origin,
sexual orientation, or gender identity. (Amended 1/14)
23. Write Great Ads
• List five great features about the property
• List five benefits of each feature
• Create three attention grabbing headlines about
the property (remember not people)
• Tell a story, create a visual and awaken emotion
• Close with a call to action
• Need help?
25. • Create all advertising about the property
• Don’t talk about the PEOPLE who
o Would live there
o Could live there
o Should live there
o Do live there
o Can’t live there
26. Best Practices
• Display the Fair Housing Poster in your Place of
Business
• Use the Equal Housing logo in advertising and
websites
29. Best Practices
• Distribute a list of Inappropriate words to use in ads
• Review ads for the above language
• Eyes on the Folder
• Require conduct yearly training (can be a
requirement of lower cost E&O)
30. Jody O’Brien
The RE/Education Company
Committed to Professionalism in Real Estate through Education
Blog
www.reeducator.wordpress.com
Presentation
www.slideshare.net/ReEducationCompany
Social Media
www.twitter.com/reeducator
www.youtube.com/msreeducator
www.facebook.com/reeducator
www.linkedin.com/in/reeducator
Thank you for Attending
Editor's Notes
When Vince and Joe Aveni's father immigrated to the United States, he started his own business-a grocery store and an Italian restaurant in Cleveland. He soon bought the building, and the family lived above the store. He worked hard to make ends meet, scrimped to send his sons to college, and dreamed the American Dream of homeownership. The nice families in the nearby residential area frequently ordered groceries from his store, so he and his sons made the deliveries. Aveni was impressed with the houses there. Very impressed. "One day," he told his sons, "I will buy a house there." His sons grew up and went to college. In 1948 Aveni retired, selling the grocery and the restaurant, and now had the money to buy his own home. A real home. One of those he had coveted in the Forest Hills area of Cleveland Heights. "Sorry," he was told. "Deed restrictions say no Italians." Aveni was shocked. The nice area with the nice houses and nice families wanted no Italians. And no Greeks. No African Americans. No Catholics. No Irish. No Jews. In desperation, Aveni sought a real estate professional for help: What could he do? Nothing, he was told, except buy a nice house in an Italian neighborhood. "My father didn't have a clue that the area was restricted," says Vince Aveni, founder of Realty One, the large Cleveland-based company. "That's the way it was in those days." But no longer.
But despite efforts to work with HUD on enforcement of the original 1968 act, NAR was seen as obstructionist for 20 of fair housing's 30 years. NAR lobbied to block almost every piece of fair housing legislation between 1968 and 1988, especially "testing" proposals. Fair housing supporters annually denounced NAR as intractable, stubborn, blind, and worse. And that's putting it kindly. In the late '80s one congressman said of NAR, "The REALTORS® are the single greatest obstacle to fair housing legislation." "In the eyes of the civil rights community, we were seen as the cause of the problem," says Nestor R. Weigand Jr., 1988 president of NAR. "We were trying desperately to do the right thing. But our emphasis on equal housing opportunity rather than integration was perceived as the problem."
