Agency, Ethics, and Fair Housing
Agency, Ethics, and Fair Housing combines fiduciary law, professional standards, and civil rights. CeRER items here often quote a single sentence of dialogue and ask whether it is a fiduciary breach, a fair housing violation, or both.
Creating agency and the fiduciary duties
Agency arises by express agreement, implication, ratification, or estoppel. The fiduciary duties are care, obedience, loyalty, disclosure, accounting, and confidentiality. Confidentiality survives termination, while the duty of disclosure runs to the client and not to the other party. Written disclosure of agency status is required at first substantive contact in most states.
Types of representation
Single agency, dual agency (lawful only where the state permits it and both parties consent in writing), designated agency, subagency, and transactional or facilitator status with no fiduciary duty. Some states prohibit dual agency outright, so a licensee moving across state lines must relearn the rules rather than assume them.
Fair housing
The federal Fair Housing Act prohibits discrimination in sale, rental, advertising, and financing based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, familial status, and disability; HUD treats sexual harassment as sex discrimination. Prohibited practices include refusal to deal, different terms, discriminatory advertising, steering, blockbusting, redlining, and panic selling. Narrow exemptions exist for owner-occupied buildings of up to four units, HOPA-qualified 55+ housing, religious organizations, and private clubs, but discriminatory advertising is never exempt.
Worked example
A landlord of a 40-unit building advertises "adults only." That is familial status discrimination: the small owner-occupied exemption does not reach 40 units, and HOPA requires at least 80% occupancy by households including someone 55 or older plus published, verified policies. The identical advertisement in a qualified 55+ community would be lawful.
Traps
Assuming any "adults only" housing is exempt; confusing blockbusting (inducing panic sales by predicting demographic change) with steering (directing buyers toward or away from areas); revealing a client's motivation to close a deal; treating an unrepresented buyer as your client; and forgetting state and local protected classes such as source of income, marital status, and sexual orientation.