• Refusing
to sell or rent to, deal or negotiate
with any person.
• Misrepresenting terms or conditions for
buying or renting housing.
• Advertising that housing is available
only to persons of a certain race,
color, sex, familial status, handicap, religion
or national origin (such as placing
Sold signs when property in fact is not sold).
• Denying that housing is available for
inspection, sale or rent when it really
is available. (This includes a practice
called steering, whereby certain brokers
may direct members of certain minority
groups away from some of their listings
in racially unmixed areas.)
• Blockbusting, a practice whereby a broker
hopes to profit through persuading
owners to sell or rent housing by telling them
that minority groups are moving into
the neighborhood; also called panic
peddling.
• Denying or requiring different terms
or conditions for home loans made by
commercial lenders such as banks, savings
and loan associations and insurance
companies.
•
Denying to anyone the use of, or participation
in, any real estate service such as broker’s
organizations, multiple-listing services
or other facilities related to the
selling or renting of housing.
The Fair Housing Act applies to the
following:
• Single-family housing owned
by private individuals when a broker
or other person in the business of
selling or renting dwellings is employed
(includes use of MLS) and/or discriminatory
advertising is used.
•
Single-family housing not owned by
private individuals, such as those
owned by development corporations.
•
Single-family housing owned by a private
individual who owns more than three
such dwellings or who, in any two-year
period, sells more than one dwelling
in which he or she was not the most
recent resident.
•
Multifamily dwellings of five or more
units.
•
Multifamily dwellings containing four
or fewer units, if the owner does not
reside in one of the units.
Exceptions: The following situations
are exempt from the Fair Housing Act
(but covered by the post-Civil War
1866 antidiscrimination civil rights
law, if based on race):
• The sale or rental of single-family
housing if neither a broker nor discriminatory
advertising is used, and no more than
one dwelling in which the owner was
not the most recent resident is sold
during any two-year period.
•
The rental of rooms or units in owner-occupied
multiple dwellings for two to four
families, if discriminatory advertising
is not used (the “Mrs. Murphy
exemption” in which Mrs. Murphy
represents the small investor struggling
to earn a living by taking in roomers
in a small rooming house).
•
The sale, rental or occupancy of dwellings
owned and operated by a religious organization
for other than commercial purposes
to persons of the same religion, if
membership in that religion is not
restricted on account of race, color,
sex or national origin; the religious
organization can give preference to
its members (e.g., it could levy a
surcharge on nonmembers).
•
The restriction of lodgings owned or
operated by a private club for other
than a commercial purpose to rental
or occupancy by its own members.
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