REAL ESTATE
Out Realtor Offers Tips for First-Time Home Buyers
Taina Carrero encourages prospective buyers to seek out LGBTQ-friendly realtors
BY TAT BELLAMY-WALKER
For many LGBTQ fi rsttime
home buyers, homeownership
can come with
some additional barriers.
Taina Carrero, an out LGBTQ
realtor who works for Coldwell
Banker Realty and serves New
York City, Westchester, and Connecticut,
advises LGBTQ fi rst-time
homebuyers to be extra mindful
of researching potential locations
where they hope to purchase a
home, fi nd a queer-friendly realtor,
and speak with residents in the
new town.
“When I was looking to purchase,
I needed an agent that was
going to hear me, that was going to
understand my needs and my concerns,
and I know that there are a
lot of people today that still have
those issues,” Carrero said. “Even
in New York where everything is
LGBTQ fi rst-time home buyers often face additional obstacles when searching for a home.
pretty open and diverse, there are
still pockets of areas where it’s not
very welcoming.”
Last year, a report from UCLA’s
Williams Institute, a public policy
think tank in California, revealed
that 49.8 percent of LGBTQ individuals
own a home when compared
to 70 percent of their heterosexual
counterparts. These disparities
widen among transgender adults,
who have a 25 percent chance at
homeownership when compared
to 58 percent of cisgender folks. In
the report, experts pointed to discriminatory
housing and lending
policies as one of the main drivers
of this issue.
Living in an LGBTQ-inclusive
neighborhood is a priority for
many of Carrero’s queer clients.
Earlier this year, Carrero said she
was concerned for a couple looking
to move from New York City to
Newburgh, New York, citing the
politics of the area. However, Carrero’s
outlook on the neighborhood
changed once the couple talked to
locals in the area.
“We started to fi nd out that there
were a lot of little pockets of LGBT
families, and you wouldn’t assume
it because it was ‘Trump country,'”
she said. “We found out the areas
were so much more diverse than
what we would have thought or
imagined.”
For individuals struggling
to fi nd an LGBTQ realtor, Carrero
recommends tapping into
the National Association of Gay
and Lesbian Real Estate Professionals
(NAGLREP), an LGBTQ
housing advocacy group and database
for thousands of queer
and allied realtors. Carrero
advises fi rst-time homebuyers
to interview at least three realtors
REUTERS/HYUNGWON KANG/FILES
before launching a housing
search.
Carrero said that anti-LGBTQ
discrimination is an obstacle for
many queer individuals entering
the fi eld.
“I have been in this business
for 10 years, and there are very
few LGBTQ realtors,” Carrero explained.
“Being LGBTQ adds a little
bit of extra stress on an already
stressful business.”
Carrero said she encountered
many of these challenges fi rsthand
based on her gender expression.
“I do see it for myself when I’m
going to present anything, even if
I’m just walking into a house. If it
happens to be a house of a person
who is not comfortable, I immediately
feel it,” Carrero said. “It’s
something I’ve always lived with,
so it doesn’t hinder what I have to
do for my clients.”
Carrero added that spending
more than a year researching is
critical for LGBTQ clients trying to
fi nd a safe area for their families.
Carrero said her knowledge of local
schools and teachers helped a parent
of an LGBTQ teenager avoid a
school district where multiple LGBTQ
teens died from suicide.
“I am speaking to him on a
weekly basis because he’s so concerned
about where to go,” she
said. “It may sound a little drastic,
but if their concern is safety and
fi nding the right neighborhood,
then the time put in the research
is well worth it.”
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