Blockbusting

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Blockbusting is a practice used mostly by real estate agents and developers to encourage property owners to sell by giving the impression that a neighborhood is changing. Blockbusting is generally illegal in the United States.^{[citation needed]}

1 Methods
2 Further reading
3 External links
4 See also

[edit] Methods

Often times, an agent or developer convinces white people to sell their houses at low prices by telling them that people of color are moving into their neighborhood, exploiting their fear of lowered property values. Often, the real estate agent then raises the price of the house again and sells it to a person of color. It has been suggested that the term originated with the practice in Chicago where in order to accommodate the out-migration of economically successful residents to better neighborhoods outside ghettos, people were hired to create a visual presence in the restricted neighborhoods and thus, encourage residents to sell their properties and move to still more restrictive suburbs. For example, black women were paid/encouraged to push baby carriages in exclusive white neighborhoods to encourage white residents to sell their properties on the premise property values would decline with an increase in the visible social differences that characterized neighboring ghettos.

Sometimes a developer will begin buying up properties in a neighborhood and leaving them empty to give the neighborhood a growing empty feeling to encourage hold outs to sell to him.

The town cannot prohibit the placing of outdoor "for sale" signs by homeowners to reduce the effect of blockbusting. Linmark v. Willingboro, 431 US 85 (1977)] Doing so would infringe upon the freedom of expression.

Alternatively and in contradiction to the preceding definition, "blockbusting" refers to the practice whereby neighborhoods demonstrating exclusivity based on social differences, particularly of race, have their perceived 'exclusive' nature broken down in order to encourage the sale of properties and in-migration of formerly excluded social groups.

[edit] Further reading

Orser, W. Edward. (1994) Blockbusting in Baltimore: The Edmondson Village Story (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky)
Seligman, Amanda I. (2005) Block by Block: Neighborhoods and Public Policy on Chicago's West Side (Chicago: University of Chicago Press).