Review of Upsold: Real Estate Agents, Prices, and Neighborhood Inequality

Abstract

Besbris’s Upsold is a sharp and insightful ethnography that falls elegantly at the intersection of economic and urban sociology. The book’s numerous contributions expand beyond the dysfunction of America’s housing markets and provide us with a better understanding of markets more generally. The core idea of the book is that middle men, mediators, and intermediaries matter for how markets function. Specifically, Besbris argues that real estate agents operate as far more than transaction facilitators, but actually influence market outcomes in profound and meaningful ways. The book contains numerous examples, but the most salient are price differentials and racial segregation. For the former, it is abundantly clear to anyone who has ever purchased a home that real estate agents actively market homes above their clients’ budgets, presumably to garner higher commissions. But what Besbris reveals is that the process is highly inconsistent across housing markets, with wealthy households being upsold far...