It's a form of steering that one housing group claims to stop.

According to the National Fair Housing Alliance (NFHA,) real estate agents tend to use schools as "a proxy for the racial composition of a neighborhood," steering customers from seeing homes in interracial neighborhoods on the claim that "the schools are bad."

In a friend of the court brief filed regarding Parents Involved in Community Schools V. Seattle School District No. 1, et al, (Seattle) and Crystal D. Meredith V Jefferson County Board of Education, et al, (Louisville) the NFHA, along with housing scholars, researchers, and other advocacy organizations, claims that "today's housing patterns are not simply products of private, free choice. Segregated residential patterns result from an array of policies and actions by public and private actors."

The pair of cases, now before the Supreme Court, involve the use of race to determine which public school a child will attend, according to voluntary integration programs under examination in Seattle and Louisville. According to an Associate Press story, "The court is considering whether the programs in those cities are acceptable moves toward student diversity -- or if they are instead illegal racial quotas."

The school districts say they are attempting to "advance the goals of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment."

"Concerned about how these trends were affecting their own children and community, locally-elected school boards in Louisville and Seattle adopted student assignment measures to foster integrated, diverse schools. In doing so, they joined hundreds of other communities around the country that have also taken steps to see that children from different backgrounds learn to live, play, and solve problems together," says the NAACP synopsis of the plans.

"When the Court rules on these cases this Term, it has an opportunity either to give these communities the ability to preserve some measure of racial integration in public schools, or to end the era of Brown (1954's Brown V Board of Education,)" says the NAACP, which also says that schools haven't been so segregated since 1970, the era that introduced busing as a solution to geographic boundaries that fostered segregation.

The NFHA has been vocal about racial steering practices and is currently bringing actions against NRT, Inc, and other firms whose agents the advocacy group says have been guilty of steering customers or providing lesser service to minority "testers."

In tests the NFHA says it has performed, under a grant provided by HUD, testers found racial steering by real estate agents to be the norm -- 87 percent. Whites were limited to viewing homes in predominantly white neighborhoods and discouraged from visiting homes in interracial neighborhoods. And "African-American and Latinos lost their right to see homes of their choosing across a wide spectrum of white communities."

The Alliance says there is a growing tendency by real estate agents to use schools as an excuse to avoid certain neighborhoods when what they are really doing is steering. "White homeseekers are consistently deterred from seeing homes in interracial neighborhoods on the claim that "the schools are bad." Yet, says the Alliance, these are the very schools recommended and neighborhoods marketing to African American and Latino homeseekers.

"To achieve integrated schools, America must support the use of race as a factor in school decisions until we achieve promotion and enforcement of the spirit and intent of the federal Fair Housing Act: to eliminate housing discrimination and ensure the creation of truly integrated neighborhoods," says Shanna L. Smith, president and CEO of the NFHA.

What's scary about this latest allegation against real estate agents is that it's probably true, even though the Alliance hasn't released its quantification or proof that it's so. An email to the organization was not answered before publication.

If you were to ask a real estate agent what the number one consideration is in choosing a home, most would probably say, "schools." Schools are the reason to choose or to avoid a neighborhood and its homes. Why? Because half of homebuyers have children under the age of 18. Higher-performing schools are coveted by homebuyers, and lower performing schools are shunned if the homebuyer has a choice between the two.

Where real estate agents must be careful is denigrating one area because of its schools to one client while ignoring or lauding the area or its schools to another client because of the color of their skin or ethnic background.

Further, agents might not even know the true performance of the schools, what programs they offer, or how they are coping with overcrowding, language barriers, No Child Left Behind, underpaid and underappreciated teachers, and a myriad of other issues.

Agents should remember that all sellers, especially those with homes in less desirable neighborhoods are looking to Realtors to help them sell their homes, not to encourage buyers to avoid their homes. In that respect, it could be Realtors themselves who are responsible for repressing home values, as much as the "bad" schools.

Fair housing training should be available to all real estate agents, as it appears that Ms. Smith and her associates are going to be watching how agents handle the question of schools as an insight into housing discrimination from now on.

Published: December 6, 2006

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Blanche is a renowned author of five real estate books. Her newest, Bubbles, Booms and Busts: Make Money In Any Real Estate Market, McGraw-Hill, was rave-reviewed by The New York Times. She was also selected from hundreds of real estate experts to contribute to Donald Trump's book, Trump: The Best Real Estate Advice I Ever Received: 100 Top Experts Share Their Strategies, Rutledge Hill Press, and is featured on page 68. Order Now Review - Honors In 2006, Blanche was selected among scores of candidates to author two consumer real estate guidebooks for the National Association of Realtors: The NAR Guide to Home Buying, and The NAR Guide to Home Selling, Wiley & Sons. She is currently planning two new books for the NAR and its members.       Known for her keen insight into real estate industry issues and for her ability to make complex subjects easy to understand, Blanche is a sought-after keynote and continuing education speaker. Real estate organizations from MLSs, to brokerages, to franchisors, to associations hire her to provide up-to-the-minute analysis of real estate industry news and advice on how to improve revenues. Her passionate delivery, peppered with stinging wit, is a huge hit with audiences and fans. Don Klein, CEO Greater Nashville Association of Realtors, Blanche Evans, Richard Courtney, president 2007, GRAR "The GNAR membership meeting last week featured Blanche Evans as the keynote speaker. Her comments and insights resonated extremely well with those in attendance and we have had many requests for copies of her PowerPoint Presentation. She was a terrific part of the membership meeting and convention program!" - Don Klein, CEO Greater Nashville Association of Realtors Coverage from WSMV, Nashville - 8-14-2007 That Interview Guy - Get Inside The Head Of Today's Generation 2007 AE Institute Session - To purchase 2006 AE Institute Session - Parts 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 HouseValues Mastermind call - Parts 1 2 Blanche's fireside chat with Jeremy Conaway, HAR - Click here. For more articles by Blanche, click here.