Blockbusting
Definition of "Blockbusting"
Blockbusting is a despicable and illegal racist business practice.
Here’s how Blockbusting happens: a real estate agent, or someone posing as one, comes to a homeowner and instills him (or her) with fear of racial minorities, saying and showing bogus stats that a large number of whatever minority the homeowner prejudicially feared was moving into their neighborhood in large numbers. Because of that, the homeowner would sell the property for a lower market price, and, in turn, the alleged real estate agent would sell at a higher market price to the exact minority the original owner feared.
The practice of blockbusting has been done to White, Black, Jews, and Foreign people, but the most notorious blockbusting practices were done with White and Black, after 1910 when over a million African American from the rural southern states of the United States of America moved north to industrialized cities in need of workers due to the World War I, which recruited many workers to serve in the US Army. The scars of Civil War and Slavery were still open, so profiteers would take advantage of that, and even hire “actors” to create a sense of overwhelming presence of black people in traditionally white neighborhoods.
Blockbusting practices were nationally exposed in the 1960’s with the civil rights movement. Because of it, stricter federal real estate laws were conceived, which made blockbusting harder. For instance: door-to-door real estate solicitation got restricted in several states to avoid blockbusting. The most important measure against blockbusting, however, was 1968’s Fair Housing Act which made (by law) religion, race, and ethnicity of a neighborhood’s inhabitants part of what a real estate agent can’t tell a home buyer client when showing a house.
Work only with credible real estate agents! Find one at The OFFICIAL Real Estate Agent Directory®.
Popular Real Estate Terms
Measure of the value of all goods and services produced by the economy within its boundaries and is the nation's broadest gauge of economic health. GDA is often a measure of the state of ...
Mortgage banker is the person or business that originates mortgages and receives payments. The mortgage banker typically sells these mortgages to investors and obtains service fees for the ...
Uncertainty in the price of real estate due to market, economic, political or other conditions. ...
If you have been wondering what can cause a market failure, the most common answer is externalities. An externality is an indirect cost or benefit to a neutral third party that comes from ...
If you are a real estate investor and you come across this term, you might wind up wondering … What is the operating expense ratio? The operating expense ratio (OER) is a way for ...
Technique used to estimate how the value of a parcel of land will affect its ability to support a given commercial improvement leaving sufficient residual net income to maintain adequate ...
As a legal term, abandonment defines a deliberate renunciation of rights to an asset or a business relationship. What does abandonment mean in real estate? In real estate, abandonment, ...
Provision in an insurance policy that caps the insurer's liability by stipulating that the owner of the property that has experienced damage must have another policy that covers usually at ...
Creditor's control over property. When a loan is secured with pledged assets, the creditor has the right to go to court to obtain possession of the property if the borrower defaults. The ...
Have a question or comment?
We're here to help.