Home buyers’ love letters, those sweet domestic missives that millions of families have used to butter up sellers of residential real estate in competitive Bay Area markets, may become a thing of the past.
In October, in response to the Black Lives Matter movement and increased awareness of fair housing laws, the California Association of Realtors provided its members with new guidance discouraging clients from writing or accepting letters that could appear to be discriminatory or violate fair housing laws.
The guidance, now included among the thick pile of forms brokers are required to talk their clients through before signing listing or purchase agreements, discourages any letter that would “inadvertently reveal, or be perceived as revealing, protected status information” or would increase the risk of “actual or unconscious bias.”
While buyers can still write a letter extolling the virtues of a rosebush, a window seat or a downtown view, they should avoid anything that could be perceived as revealing protected status, such as age, race, religious beliefs, sexual orientation, national origin, gender identity, disability or immigration status, according to the real estate industry group.
That means no more pictures of the buyer’s family gathered at a Giants game. They should not describe how they could imagine their children running down the staircase on Christmas morning, or the extended family gathering in the kitchen for large Italian family dinners of spaghetti and meatballs, or celebrating the return of a son or daughter from overseas military deployment.
Marc Dickow, president of the San Francisco Association of Realtors, said the guidance is prompting a healthy discussion in the Bay Area, which has one of the nation’s most competitive markets and a long tradition of buyers using prose and photographs to soften up sellers and gain an edge on the competition.
“This opens the door for the conversation a lot of agents don’t have with their buyers and sellers regarding fair housing,” Dickow said. “The point of the advisory is it’s OK to write letters stating how much they love the property but stay away from personal information.”
Realtor Nina Dosanjh, who works out of Vanguard’s Mission Street office, said the new focus on fair housing laws has been inspired by both Black Lives Matter and “The Color of Law,” Richard Rothstein’s 2017 best-seller about how government policies contributed to segregated neighborhoods.
“‘The Color of Law’ was an awakening for a lot of us,” she said. “It gave a historical perspective at a time there was already an awareness of inequity and racial injustice. It’s a conversation people should be having.”
The new suggested rules are getting a mixed reaction from brokers, buyers and sellers. On the one hand, picking an offer partially based on a family photo or personal letter could tip the scale in favor of the buyer who has the most in common with the seller. They might share a connection to a school, church or sports team, which could give that prospective buyer an unfair advantage over a family coming from an entirely different cultural or ethnic background.
On the other hand, many families want to pass their home along to someone who will appreciate its qualities, its proximity to an elementary school or park, someone who is planning to live there rather than flip it for a quick buck. A love letter can help assuage the guilt associated with selling off the family homestead and give the seller comfort that they have left the property in good hands.
Berkeley native Molly Livingston, who works in public relations and lives outside of Reno, recently sold a house she and her husband lived in after getting married and having their first child. They got three offers. While two offers were from limited liability corporations — a sign the buyer is an investor — the third came with a love letter.
“It was not the highest offer, but we liked this couple,” Livingston said. “He was a military person. She was a nurse. They were coming in with a VA loan. We had bought that house as a young couple and had done a ton of work to make it into a sweet little family home. We saw a lot of ourselves in them.”
San Francisco real estate developer and entrepreneur Jesse Herzog thinks a love letter probably helped him and his wife, Kristin, get their new place in Lower Pacific Heights. In 2014, the couple had made 10 offers on homes, all of which were “rock bottom” and none of which were accepted. They ended up in a condo in Japantown, which they outgrew when their second child came along. This time Herzog was determined to be successful. He wrote about how happy they were to be raising a family in the neighborhood — the house was just five blocks away — how much they loved its architecture and light. They singled out the house’s proximity to El Burrito Express II, their go-to taqueria.
“We kept it pretty anodyne,” Herzog said. “You don’t want to mention the dog in case the seller is a cat person.”
He said he doesn’t think the letter was the only reason their offer was accepted, but he doesn’t think it hurt. “You live in your house — it is such a personal experience,” he said. “It’s natural that you would try to personalize what otherwise is a business transaction.”
But love letters can be risky, said Realtor Kevin Birmingham, who heads up Park North Real Estate in the Sunset District. The bidder is left to guess what sort of message might appeal to the seller, whose background is unknown.
For those reasons he discourages clients from writing or reading love letters — but both buyers and sellers still squeeze him for information. A few years ago he represented an elderly Irish immigrant who was selling her family home in the Sunset.
“I was dealing with her son,” Birmingham said. “Near the end of the process, he said his mother wanted to know if it was an Irish family buying the house. I said, ‘No, he is Asian, but his boyfriend is Irish, if that helps.’ They got the house.”
Daniel Hershkowitz, a San Francisco broker and real estate attorney, said that the new guidance has educated agents about fair housing and discrimination laws. He said it’s up to brokers to lay out the rules about what can be said in a love letter and what may cross legal lines. He is generally discouraging clients from writing or reading them.
“These letters can be just as ineffective as effective, so why not eliminate the possibility either way in the spirit of fair housing laws?”
Whether or not love letters are part of the buying process, many sellers will do their own sleuthing about who will end up with their property.
“Every seller turns to the internet as soon as they get ahold of the buyer’s name,” Park North Realtor Jodi Halldorson said. “It’s natural. The home has meant so much to you. It embodies more than a place to sleep. You only hope it means as much to the next person.”
Still, while a seller might take a slightly lower offer to avoid selling to an investor who might tear down the house, it’s rare that the accepted offer is significantly lower than another bid.
San Jose broker Pat Kapowich said love letters “work like a champ” and the new guidance will “put a new wrinkle on the way we operate.” Now that both state and local Realtor associations have issued guidance on the topic, it won’t be long before lawyers will start looking for clients to file lawsuits claiming discrimination in situations where the letters are still being written.
“It’s a road map for how to get sued,” he said. “Clients now ask, ‘What kind of people live here?’ I now say ‘I’m prohibited by federal law from answering that question.’”
Even with the new guidance, brokers said they assume many clients will want to continue to write letters. The key will be making sure the prose focuses on the architectural features of the house and not on anything that might reveal personal information about the would-be buyer. And while a well-composed love letter might occasionally put one bidder ahead of another in a competitive situation, in most cases the surest path to a victorious offer is through the bank account, not the heartstrings, Halldorson said.
“The money has to be there to back it up,” she said.
J.K. Dineen is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: jdineen@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @sfjkdineen
