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>I'm interested in enforcing the _existing law_ [...] I understand but your opinion is predicated on your particular reading of the "brokering services"[0] law

• dragonwriter 10y ago
  > I understand but your opinion is predicated on your particular reading of "brokering services" law you cited previously. Well, yes, obviously. I was responding to your claim, which was about the utility of the position as a tool to convincing people about whether they ought to discriminate, and pointing out that that wasn't the point. > That extensive enumeration of brokers/agents/salesman/employee is a person that does the matching work on behalf of the client. I've done both sales (on both sides) and rentals (on one side) through brokers, and in no case have they performed matching for me, in every case they provided a variety of administrative support services, including assisting in the search for matches (though, in the present case that I am currently working on, I hope they don't need to even do that -- if things go well, the match we handed them at the outset will be the final one.) Which is to say that I think your idea of what a broker/agent/salesman or any person in the business of selling or renting dwellings does is excessively and unjustifiably narrow.
  • jasode 10y ago
    >Well, yes, obviously. It wasn't obvious and your previous statement had to be dissected to clarify it. Upthread, you stated the following without any disclaimers of "in my opinion" or "in my interpretation": >But its not legal to use a brokering service to arrange the rental if you discriminate, so there goes AirBnB for that use. It certainly sounded definitive but if left alone without further commentary, it's misleading. That statement depends on how expansively one defines "brokering services". Not everyone agrees with your definition and I further would claim that the majority do not. >the utility of the position as a tool to convincing people [...], and pointing out that that wasn't the point. But that is the point. If you want to use an authoritative phrase like "existing law", people have to agree with your intepretation of Airbnb's utility as a "brokering service". If they don't, they believe they still have a legal basis to discriminate. >I think your idea of what a broker/agent/salesman or any person in the business of selling or renting dwellings does is excessively and unjustifiably narrow. On the contrary, I think it is your classification of Airbnb as a "brokering service" that is idiosyncratic. Based on my informal survey of Airbnb renters and landlords, it doesn't seem like the majority agree with you. I ask them "What is Airbnb?" and they say "rental listings" and not "rental brokers". For people to believe they are breaking the antidiscrimination law because they use brokering services, they need signals from the world such as the states requiring Airbnb to acquire brokerage licenses. (Maybe also add to the process that an Airbnb representative must join the transaction via chat or email to "close" the deal between renter & landlord.) Reading your interpretation of what "brokering service" is not enough. To recap, the factors you believe Airbnb a brokerage: - commissions payment - payment collection, refunds The factor that Airbnb is not a brokerage: - self-service listings The "self-service" is a huge mental block and overrides the commissions payment factor in many minds. The sentiment is: "If I do the work to create the listing, why would Airbnb be the broker? That makes no sense." The self-service aspect is why some people think of Christie's and Sotheby's as auction house brokers and they "broker a deal" to sell a piece of art ... but nobody thinks of do-it-yourself Ebay as an auction broker. Ebay is auction listings.