The Role of Real Estate Agents as Information Mediators in Two American Cities

Abstract

Real estate salespersons in the San Francisco-Oakland metropolitan area and in Minneapolis and its suburbs were surveyed in order to document the existence of any spatial bias the recommendations they make to prospective home buyers. Any such bias, it is argued, acts as a constraint to the information field and therefore also to the search space of such households. It was found that although the consensus of real estate salespersons concerning neighborhoods "appropriate" for four household types was largely in accord with the actual distribution of such households within the two metropolitan areas, that individual responses showed highly limited patterns of information and preference. Even when given the opportunity to recommend areas anywhere within the metropolitan area in a hypothetical, non-sales situation, individual salespersons centered their recommendations on those areas in which they are most active in the selling and listing of houses. The size and complexity of the metropolitan setting do seem to affect the strength of these tendencies, but even in a medium-sized, relatively homogeneous setting, there exists a localized pattern of realtor information. In general, those households which are dependent on realty salesmen for information on neighborhood characteristics are making use of a highly structured and spatially limited information source.