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mburnamfink 's review for:
A Nation of Realtors(R): A Cultural History of the Twentieth-Century American Middle Class
by Jeffrey M. Hornstein
A Nation of Realtors® is up front that it is Hornstein's dissertation, and while this book is a close study of the creation of the professional culture of Realtors® from 1900 to 1950, it has the weaknesses of a starting academic work, a kind of "wait, this is what you thought was interesting?" I mean no offense, academic work is hard, and my own dissertation is hardly a model of lucid clarity. But know going in this going to be narrow.
Hornstein's story is about the transformation of real estate brokers into Realtors®. And that 'registered trademark' symbol is an important part of it. A real estate broker is anyone who connects people who want to buy land with people who want to sell it. Through the 19th century, the whole profession was haunted by an image of unscrupulous 'curbsiders' who would pounce on unsuspecting newcomers to town, elderly widows, similar unfortunates, and swindle them out of their money. By contrast, a Realtor is a paid up member of a local real estate broker associate, affiliated with the national board, was an ethical professional, a keen dealmaker who provided access to middle-class dreams, and who helped build new beautiful cities.
Hornstein moves through a variety of cultural history conflicts. Pages are spent on the tensions in the conception of masculinity in the early 20th century, and the figure of the 'professional ethical entrepreneur' as a many-faceted figure. There are conflicts between Realtors® and non-member brokers, board status and state licensing requirements, the desires of the national committee versus local boards, and the new academic discipline of 'land economics' against the practice of actual real estate brokerage, along with pages about the role of women in real estate. While women were a minority in this era, as a paraprofession about the 'home', they made swift inroads as Realtors® well before they entered law, medicine, and science in significant numbers.
But this book touches only lightly on what I regard as the key issue, the creation of the middle class as defined by a owning a detached single family dwelling. Suburbia was no accident. Rather, it was a deliberate innovation to create a synthetic Jeffersonian agrarian republic at the time that real economic forces were encouraging a class of urban renters and rural megafarms. Realtors® played a key role in this, helping guide Federal policies that encouraged mortgage loans and discouraged public housing, as well as thousands of local level zoning efforts to create 'proper neighborhoods for proper people'.
The policy issues here are fascinating, and sadly mistreated in favor of worn tropes that hey, Progressive Era people were full of contradictions, and even the best of them were shockingly racist by post-Civil Rights Act standards.
Oh, and a life-long Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Reader, Hornstein has nothing to say about the allegation that all 1.3 million licensed Realtors® are actually aliens, acting as the first wave of an invasion. You read it here first!
Hornstein's story is about the transformation of real estate brokers into Realtors®. And that 'registered trademark' symbol is an important part of it. A real estate broker is anyone who connects people who want to buy land with people who want to sell it. Through the 19th century, the whole profession was haunted by an image of unscrupulous 'curbsiders' who would pounce on unsuspecting newcomers to town, elderly widows, similar unfortunates, and swindle them out of their money. By contrast, a Realtor is a paid up member of a local real estate broker associate, affiliated with the national board, was an ethical professional, a keen dealmaker who provided access to middle-class dreams, and who helped build new beautiful cities.
Hornstein moves through a variety of cultural history conflicts. Pages are spent on the tensions in the conception of masculinity in the early 20th century, and the figure of the 'professional ethical entrepreneur' as a many-faceted figure. There are conflicts between Realtors® and non-member brokers, board status and state licensing requirements, the desires of the national committee versus local boards, and the new academic discipline of 'land economics' against the practice of actual real estate brokerage, along with pages about the role of women in real estate. While women were a minority in this era, as a paraprofession about the 'home', they made swift inroads as Realtors® well before they entered law, medicine, and science in significant numbers.
But this book touches only lightly on what I regard as the key issue, the creation of the middle class as defined by a owning a detached single family dwelling. Suburbia was no accident. Rather, it was a deliberate innovation to create a synthetic Jeffersonian agrarian republic at the time that real economic forces were encouraging a class of urban renters and rural megafarms. Realtors® played a key role in this, helping guide Federal policies that encouraged mortgage loans and discouraged public housing, as well as thousands of local level zoning efforts to create 'proper neighborhoods for proper people'.
The policy issues here are fascinating, and sadly mistreated in favor of worn tropes that hey, Progressive Era people were full of contradictions, and even the best of them were shockingly racist by post-Civil Rights Act standards.
Oh, and a life-long Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy Reader, Hornstein has nothing to say about the allegation that all 1.3 million licensed Realtors® are actually aliens, acting as the first wave of an invasion. You read it here first!