How is it that America's cities remain almost as segregated as they were fifty years ago? In Race Brokers, Elizabeth Korver-Glenn examines how housing market professionals--including housing developers, real estate agents, mortgage lenders, and appraisers--construct contemporary urban housing markets in ways that contribute to neighborhood inequality and racial segregation. Drawing on extensive ethnographic and interview data collected in Houston, Texas, Korver-Glenn shows how these professionals, especially those who are White, use racist tools to build a fundamentally unequal housing market and are even encouraged to apply racist ideas to market activity and interactions. Korver-Glenn further tracks how professionals broker racism across the entirety of the housing exchange process--from the home's construction, to real estate brokerage, mortgage lending, home appraisals, and the home sale closing. Race Brokers highlights the imperative to interrupt the racism that pervades housing market professionals' work, dismantle the racialized routines that underwrite such racism, and cultivate a truly fair housing market.

"I highly recommend Korver-Glenn's book to housing scholars for both its important methodological intervention and her insights from the field. For housing practitioners and policymakers, I recommend the penultimate recommendations chapter, which has implementable policies for regulation and oversight, such as recommendations for building a more just appraising profession." - Stephen Sherman, Journal of the American Planning Association

"For scholars of neighborhoods, housing, and racial segregation, Dr. Korver-Glenn offers an insightful look into the role of real estate professionals in patterning inequality and reifying racial segregation.... Dr. Korver-Glenn offers an opportunity to apply the Race Brokers framework beyond the field of housing, helping sociologists better understand how racist ideas and tropes inform other unequal power relationships and market exchanges." - Brian J. McCabe, Social Forces

"Race Brokers: Housing Markets and Segregation in 21st Century Urban America...is an engaging and compelling ethnography that convincingly argues that racial segregation is not the by-product of "natural" or "race-neutral" factors...the book shows that segregation results from the racist practices of a constellation of housing market professionals." - Meredith Greif, Johns Hopkins University