Working on the Market: A Study of Real Estate Agents' Professional Practices

• In Event: 256 - Section on Organizations, Occupations and Work Roundtables (one-hour)
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 15. Social Networks

Abstract

The housing market is considered as one of the most important engines of the American Economy. The housing bubble and the subprime crisis reflected its relative sensitivity. Few sociological studies have tackled the housing market and their actors mostly in the European context and only limited work have been devoted to the practices of real estate agents in the United States (House 1977; Wharton 2004; Hornstein 2005).
Drawing on 20 interviews with real estate agents in the Tucson Metropolitan Area, I explore the professional and personal trajectories on agents, and stress how agents, more or less strategically, invest in certain niches of the markets, how agents go to find clients and establish relationships that can sustain their business activity. I highlight how these social relationships are created and maintained in a constant mix of friendly relations and business exchanges. I find that realtors follow a controlled form of presentation, used both in their personal and professional interactions and that they mobilize more or less consciously for creating and maintaining social relationships. While self-presentations represent accepted ways of conveying the identity of a realtor, the discovery of common socio-demographic and cultural characteristics transforms the nature of the relationship, and introduce an intuitive form of trust, look and comfort (DiMaggio 1993), resulting in increased chances of completing a transaction and securing referrals. Real estate agents rely on their background and cultural tastes to perform their work and get clients, but also construct within their activity forms of homophily with their clients.

Author

• Eliza Benites Gambirazio, University of Arizona, University Paris III, and CREDA