Fair Housing

A commitment we take seriously

At Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Carolinas Companies we are committed to staying informed about fair housing laws and practices, and providing equal professional service without regard to the race, color, religion, gender (sex), disability (handicap), familial status, national origin, sexual orientation or gender identity of any prospective or current client or customer, or of the residents of any community.

The statement above is the brokerage’s, quoted as published. Everything that follows describes how it is applied in this practice.

What the law protects

The federal Fair Housing Act makes it unlawful to discriminate in the sale, rental, or financing of housing on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, familial status, or disability. North Carolina’s State Fair Housing Act, codified at NCGS Chapter 41A, provides parallel protection. The brokerage commitment above extends beyond the federal classes by also naming sexual orientation and gender identity.

Fair housing law reaches further than an outright refusal. It also covers steering a buyer toward or away from a neighborhood, describing a community in terms of who lives there, and providing different information or a different standard of service to different clients.

How this shapes the work here

This site publishes detailed neighborhood guides, and neighborhood content is precisely where steering happens when a practice is careless about it. A few standing rules govern how those guides are written.

Neighborhoods are described by price, geography, and built environment. Housing stock, architecture, lot character, commute, and amenities. They are never described by the characteristics of the people who live there.

School information is presented factually, attributed to its source, and accompanied by a note that attendance boundaries must be verified by address. School ratings are never used as a filter, a sort order, or a visual ranking anywhere on this site. Rating data correlates with protected characteristics, and turning it into a sorting mechanism turns it into a proxy.

The neighborhood directory can be filtered by price band, county, built character, and sub area. Nothing else. There is no demographic filter and there will not be one.

Every client receives the same market information, the same neighborhood analysis, and the same standard of service.

If you believe you have experienced housing discrimination

You can file a complaint at no cost, and you do not need an attorney to do so.

U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development
Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity
Report housing discrimination: https://www.hud.gov/reporthousingdiscrimination
Fair housing information: https://www.hud.gov/fairhousing
Telephone: 1-800-669-9777

North Carolina Office of Administrative Hearings, Civil Rights Division
Housing discrimination complaint process:
https://www.oah.nc.gov/civil-rights-division/housing-discrimination
North Carolina Human Relations Commission:
https://www.oah.nc.gov/civil-rights-division/human-relations-commission
Complaints: hrc.complaints@oah.nc.gov
Civil Rights Division: Civilrightsdiv@oah.nc.gov