Upsold: Real Estate Agents, Prices, and Neighborhood Inequality. By Max Besbris. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020. Pp. 221. $90.00 (cloth); $30.00 (paper).
Upsold: Real Estate Agents, Prices, and Neighborhood Inequality. By Max Besbris. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2020. Pp. 221. $90.00 (cloth); $30.00 (paper).
复制标题
增售：房地产经纪人、价格和邻里不平等。
DOI：
10.1086/719696
复制
发表时间：
2022
影响因子：
4.4
通讯作者：
P. Hepburn
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
P. Hepburn
B esbris的《向上销售》是一本敏锐而富有洞察力的民族志，福尔斯优雅地落在经济学和城市社会学的交叉点上。这本书的众多贡献超出了美国房地产市场的功能障碍，并为我们提供了更好地了解市场更普遍。这本书的核心思想是，中间人、调停者和中介机构对市场如何运作至关重要。具体来说，贝斯布里斯认为，真实的房地产经纪人的运作远远超过交易促进者，但实际上影响市场结果的深刻和有意义的方式。这本书包含了许多例子，但最突出的是价格差异和种族隔离。对于前者，任何曾经购买过房屋的人都非常清楚，真实的房地产经纪人积极地在客户的预算之外推销房屋，大概是为了获得更高的佣金。但贝斯布里斯揭示的是，这一过程在整个房地产市场上高度不一致，富裕家庭的增售力度远远超过更温和的购房者。虽然这看起来，至少在一开始，像是一个罕见的不平等反过来工作的例子，但现实是，只要这样的过程继续下去，它就会在已经富裕的社区重申高价格（和良好的投资），而让其他人下降。对于后者，贝斯布里斯通过描述真实的房地产经纪人如何理解和捍卫这一过程，为我们理解种族操纵做出了贡献--这对政策制定至关重要，但在现存的研究中却经常被掩盖。大多数经纪人似乎都明白公平住房法的存在，也知道他们不应该回答诸如“什么样的人住在这栋楼里？”因此，伤害发生在互动的潜台词中，特别是当真实的房地产经纪人认为自己的工作是根据客户的偏好来匹配住房时。因为这些偏好往往是不言而喻的，而且考虑到涉及的众多权衡，难以言表，真实的房地产经纪人承担起自己的偏好
B esbris’s Upsold is a sharp and insightful ethnography that falls elegantly at the intersection of economic and urban sociology. The book’s numerous contributions expand beyond the dysfunction of America’s housing markets and provide us with a better understanding of markets more generally. The core idea of the book is that middle men, mediators, and intermediaries matter for how markets function. Specifically, Besbris argues that real estate agents operate as far more than transaction facilitators, but actually influence market outcomes in profound and meaningful ways. The book contains numerous examples, but the most salient are price differentials and racial segregation. For the former, it is abundantly clear to anyone who has ever purchased a home that real estate agents actively market homes above their clients’ budgets, presumably to garner higher commissions. But what Besbris reveals is that the process is highly inconsistent across housing markets, with wealthy households being upsold far more aggressively than more modest home seekers. While this might seem, at least at first, like a rare instance of inequality working in reverse, the reality is that so long as such a process continues, it reaffirms high prices (and good investments) in already wealthy communities, while leaving others to decline. For the latter, Besbris contributes to our understanding of racial steering by describing how real estate agents understand and defend the process—something that is critically important for policymaking, yet too often glossed over in the extant research. Most agents, it seems, understand that fair housing law exists and know they are not supposed to answer questions like “what sorts of people live in this building?” Thus the harm occurs in the unspoken moments of the interaction, particularly when real estate agents believe themselves to be doing the job of matching housing to their clients’ preferences. Because these preferences are often both unspoken and, given the numerous tradeoffs involved, unspeakable, real estate agents take it upon themselves to assume the preferences