Challenges, Opportunities For Black Real Estate Agents, Home Buyers

by SYLVESTER BROWN JR.

Nearly 55 years after the Fair Housing Act was signed into law-which was designed to address discrimination in selling, financing, or renting of any home-Black homeownership still lags behind white homeownership — by a lot.

These were the findings released in March by the National Association of Real Estate Brokers’ (NAREB) in its annual “State of Housing in Black America” (SHIBA) report. According to the report, just 45.3% of Black households owned their own homes in 2022 compared to 74.6% of white households.

Writing in the report’s introduction, NAREB President, Lydia Pope, offered some historical insight on today’s dwindling numbers.

“The year 2004 marked the highest rate of Black homeownership: just under 50%. But when the housing market collapsed in 2008, Black people were affected disproportionately by predatory lending,” Pope wrote, adding: “And 15 years on, that home owning demographic has not fully recovered.”

Last year, St. Louis Realtors issued a public apology for its history of racially discriminatory practices. As part of its apology, the group admitted to decades of laws and policies that created barriers for African Americans wanting to own homes in and around the City of St. Louis. They also revealed a plan to move forward progressively.

Delicia Lacy, local chapter president of NAREB, spoke at the St. Louis Realtors event last year. “Progress has been made,” she said but, “we have a long way to go.”

“When it comes to affecting the community and seeing real change,” Lacy stressed, “that’s going to take real time.”

Lacy has been in the real estate game for almost 16 years. At the tender age of 19, she was hired as a VP of operations overseeing almost 170 hotels across the country. Marriage and children dictated a less traveled occupation so, in 2015, she went into real estate, which she said wasn’t much different than managing hotels. With real estate, however, Lacy said she sees a way to build generational wealth for her family.

She gives the St. Louis Realtors credit for initiating a 14-step plan that holds the agency accountable to minority communities and minority homeowners. She notes how the agency has hired a DEI (diversity, equity, and inclusion) manager whose job is to ensure the St. Louis Realtors stay on track with their plan. However, Lacy worries if the plan will make any great change in careers in real estate for Black agents.

“Look at the numbers,” she stressed, “only 7% of real estate agents in this country are black and there are a lot less of them in the state of Missouri. We must understand how that number affects the numbers of black homeowners.”

Her agency’s stated mission,‘Democracy in Housing’ cannot be reached, Lacy said, if realtors don’t address underlying issues such as the century’s-long history of housing discrimination, predatory lending, how Black people have yet to recover from the 2008 housing market crash or the sorrowful number of Black real estate agents.

“Representation matters,” the local NAREB president argues, insisting that more Black agents in the field is the only sound way to increase Black homeownership.

“When you’re trying to make a change for your family, you want to do that with someone who understands you, who can make you feel comfortable, who doesn’t judge you,” Lacy said. “And when it comes to Black real estate, we must have more Black realtors.”

Amjad Abdallah, 35, shares Lacy’s passion. The experience of buying his first house in 2016 caused him to realize how little he knew about the real estate market. Abdallah has been a pharmacy technician for the past 14 years. He felt that becoming a homeowner was a good security move but he was left with the nagging feeling that he should know more about the home-buying process-not only for himself but for others.

“Healthcare is a woman-dominated field and I realized there were a lot of women I worked with who made more money than me but were paying more than I pay in mortgage for rent,” Abdallah explained. “So, I started thinking, instead of them paying someone else’s mortgage, there’s no reason why they shouldn’t own a house themselves.”

This conundrum motivated Abdallah to quit his job and enroll in a real estate class.

“The classes were reasonable, about $700,” he said, adding that he’s now completed the classes, taken the real estate test and, this year, started a whole new career.

Abdallah said it took him a minute to comfortably call himself a “real estate agent.” His confidence was boosted, however, when his sister was having trouble with what she defined as “a terrible agent.”

“She asked me to help, and I said ‘yeah,’ since I spent all that money and I wanted to use the knowledge, I said ‘let’s figure this out,’” Abdallah recalled.

They did.

“We got the deal done and got it closed,” Abdallah said. “I learned so much from just that one transaction, it boosted my confidence to the point where I can now say, ‘Yeah, I’m a real estate agent.’”

The real estate field, Abdallah stressed, may be hard for many Blacks to enter.

“Most Black real estate agents I encounter are from the middle-class and that‘s because, after you pay for classes to pass the tests, you have to come up with all these other different fees before you can ever sell anything.

“A lot of Blacks don’t have two or three thousand dollars laying around to just jump into a commission-based field.”

Still, the idea that he can play a part in getting more low-income African Americans in their own homes is motivation for Abdallah.

“I reach out to my homies and say, ‘bro, you have three kids; you get a fat income check from the government every year. Let’s clean up your credit, fix your debt-to-income ratio and, next year, let’s use that income tax check to get you into a house.’”

Even with the cost necessary to become a real estate agent, Lacy insists that more African Americans need to join the profession. She even recommends reaching out to younger African Americans and exposing them to possible futures in real estate.

“We have to start participating in career days, getting to these kids so we can get more of ‘us’ into this real estate industry to change the trajectory.”

Abdallah and Lacy maintain that owning property-buying and selling homes-is the soundest way to build personal and generational wealth. More Black real estate agents in the field, they maintain, can play a crucial role in helping low and middle-income Blacks in particular become homebuyers.

Lacy adds that becoming a “good” real estate agent is like any other “entrepreneurial journey.”

“You must apply yourself, do the research and put in the hard work to service your clients. Do all that and it can be an awesome career.”

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Original article from The St. Louis American