A real estate agent can help you sell or buy a real estate in various ways. But there are certain things that a real estate agent can and cannot do for you. There are limitations to the things that a real estate agent can do and one of the restrictions on them is the Federal Fair Housing Act.

The Federal Fair Housing Act

The Federal Fair Housing Act is probably the biggest constraint on real estate agents. According to this law, discrimination is prohibited in the real estate business. Here are the things that the Federal Fair Housing Act forbids:

On sale or rental of housing, no real estate agent is allowed to do any of the following acts that might discriminate according to sex, race, religion, color or nationality:

  • Decline to negotiate, rent or sell housing
  • Make housing unavailable
  • Deny lodging
  • Set unusual conditions, terms and privileges on selling or renting a house
  • Offer unusual services or amenities for housing
  • Convince the owners to rent or sell their properties for their own profit
  • Restrict someone from achieving amenities or services that is connected to the rental or selling of the house

For mortgage lending, these are the actions that a real estate agent is now allowed to do:

  • Decline to bring information on loans
  • Decline to make a mortgage loan
  • Single out on assessing a property.
  • Make use of unusual terms or conditions for getting a loan
  • Enforce unusual conditions or terms such as unusual fees, rates or points

A real estate agent under any real estate transaction is forbidden to:

  • Make use of advertisements that implies on restrictions on real estate that is based on the discrimination of religion, sex, race, color or nationality. This law also applies to single-family and owner-occupied housing that are originally exempted from the Federal Fair Housing Act.
  • Intimidating, interfering, coercing or threatening a person who exercises their Fair Housing rights

There are also other limitations to how much a real estate agent can help. Some expectations of the client according to a neighborhood may not be accepted by a real estate agent. For example, if a client wishes a real estate agent to get them a house that is close to a protected class’ area, an agent must not comply with the request. The agent should not even dare to advertise the type of neighborhood where he is selling a real estate. If a client demands to get a house to a neighborhood of, let’s say African-Americans, a real estate agent must refuse.

Another limitation of a real estate agent is the use of specific words in advertising. An agent must not use words that would reckon to signify a type of protected class. Words such as handicapped, married, singles only, couples, sports-minded and other similar words or phrases should not be used by an agent on his advertisements.

Clients might also request for a house near a school district. The problem is, the children of the client might not be accepted to a school for certain reasons. So a real estate agent must ask for the limits of the client’s search and explain that their children might not get into the school they like. To guarantee a certain school district for a client is not the agent’s job.