Fair Housing in Massachusetts: What a Seller May Not Consider

Most people meet fair housing law as a form they sign and forget. It is worth more attention than that, in both directions: sellers routinely do not realise the duty is theirs and not merely their agent's, and buyers frequently cannot tell the difference between losing a house and being refused one.

Two statutes, and the state one is broader

The federal Fair Housing Act protects race, colour, religion, national origin, sex, familial status and disability.

Massachusetts goes considerably further. M.G.L. c. 151B adds, among others, age, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity, ancestry, genetic information, veteran or military status, and — the one that surprises people most — the source of a person's income, including a housing subsidy or public assistance.

That last category is the most frequently violated in ordinary practice, and usually not out of malice. "We would rather not deal with a voucher" is a sentence that gets said, and in Massachusetts it is the sentence the statute is aimed at. Enforcement runs through the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, and the Attorney General's office has its own civil rights authority.

The duty is the seller's too

This is the part most sellers have never been told. An agent who steers, screens or discriminates creates exposure for their brokerage — and for the client who directed it or accepted its benefit. "My agent handled it" is not a defence, and neither is a preference expressed privately and acted on quietly.

So a seller choosing among offers may weigh price, deposit, financing strength, timeline, contingencies and anything else about the transaction. What they may not weigh is anything about the people.

Why the personal letter is a liability rather than a charm

The buyer letter — the note about the family, the photograph, the plans for the nursery — is close to a perfect delivery mechanism for protected characteristics. It routinely conveys familial status, race, religion and national origin in a paragraph, and the photograph makes it worse.

Once a seller has read one, they cannot un-know it, and a decision made afterwards is a decision made with that information available. It does not matter that the seller had no discriminatory intent; what matters is what a complaint would be able to show they knew. Many brokerages now decline to forward them for exactly this reason, and a buyer's agent who advises sending one is handing their client's opponent a problem.

Compete on terms instead. Arriving at your offer and winning a bidding war set out the levers that actually move a seller, all of which are about the transaction.

Steering, and how ordinary it sounds

Steering is directing buyers toward or away from neighbourhoods on the basis of a protected characteristic, and it almost never announces itself. It sounds like a helpful remark:

"You would be more comfortable over here."
"Let me show you where families like yours tend to buy."
Filtering which listings a buyer is shown, without being asked to.
Describing an area by the characteristics of the people who live there rather than by the characteristics of the place.

The legitimate version of the same conversation is factual and it is about the property and the town: commute times, tax rates, what the school assignment is and how to verify it, what sold and for how much. The town guides are written that way on purpose. A buyer should choose the neighbourhood; an agent should supply the information the choice needs.

Disability, which has its own rules

Two obligations sit apart from the rest and both are commonly misunderstood.

Reasonable accommodation — a change to a rule, policy or practice. In a condominium, an assistance animal in a building with a no-pets rule is the standard example. An assistance animal is not a pet for this purpose, and a blanket pet rule is not an answer to the request.
Reasonable modification — a physical change, such as a ramp or a grab bar. In housing generally the requesting party usually bears the cost, and Massachusetts imposes its own additional requirements on certain owners.

It is also unlawful to ask about the nature or severity of a disability. Whether an accommodation is needed is a permitted question; what the diagnosis is, is not.

Advertising, which is where innocent wording goes wrong

Listing copy describes the property, never the preferred occupant. "Perfect for a young family", "ideal for a professional couple", "walking distance to the church" — all three describe who should live there, and all three are the kind of phrasing complaints are built from. "Four bedrooms, two full baths, quarter-acre level lot" describes a house.

Appraisal bias

A real and documented problem nationally, and one a homeowner can act on. If an appraisal comes back far below the evidence and you have reason to think the valuation was influenced by who lives in the house or by the neighbourhood's demographics, you can file a reconsideration of value with the lender, supported by specific comparable sales — the same mechanism as any other disputed appraisal, covered in the appraisal guide — and you can complain to the lender and to MCAD. Some homeowners remove personal photographs before an appraisal, which should not be necessary and sometimes is.

If you think it has happened to you

1.Write down what was said, by whom, and when, while it is fresh. Contemporaneous notes matter.
2.Keep the messages. Texts and emails are the evidence that survives.
3.Note what happened to comparable buyers where you know it — an offer refused, a showing not granted, a property that stayed available afterwards.
4.File a complaint with MCAD, with HUD, or both. The Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination and HUD each take them, and there are deadlines — shorter than people expect.
5.Talk to a fair housing organisation or an attorney. Massachusetts has non-profit agencies that investigate and assist at no cost.

For sellers, in one paragraph

Decide on the transaction. Tell your agent to bring you offers and terms, not backgrounds. Do not read the letters. Do not ask who the buyers are, and if you learn anyway, do not let it show up in the decision. None of this is a limitation on getting the best price — everything that actually determines the best outcome is a term of the offer, and every one of those is something you are entitled to weigh.