“Do you do Section Eight vouchers?” the caller asked.

This was a question I had never encountered in more than two decades selling real estate. Yet I knew what they represented: Government support for low-income renters.

My instincts were to immediately hang up the phone. This wasn’t any area in which I’d ever worked, not even when I first started out as a rental-only agent in 2003. And not once among the hundreds of rental deals that launched my career. However, something held me back. I started thinking about the lawsuits I had been reading about, which other real estate firms across New York City are embroiled in currently. They claim income discrimination by landlords and real estate professionals. You can read about it here. At the center of the discussion: housing vouchers. So I paused.

During that extra minute on the phone, the man introduced himself as James Percell. And, if I was going to be on the phone with him, my next reflex would be qualify him—that is, to make sure he had the potential to actually rent an apartment. And since he had a time limit to find something in Manhattan or Brooklyn, that was a good start.

Bad Budget = No Thanks

Less great was that he could only spend $2400/month. In most markets, that budget might get you a decent two-to-three bedroom apartment. In Manhattan, it might get you a basement-level one-bedroom apartment, if you’re lucky. So it’s a waste of time to work with renters like that. They are better served going directly to landlords or listing agents.

And if you’ve been following this blog for the last few months, or the last few years, you would know that our business is focused on sales. Just how focused? About 97% of our business is sales. And of the rental business that we do, nearly all of it is landlord-centric, or to help clients we meet who are relocating to New York City.

None of this is to brag, or to be a snob. It’s just the truth. The crazy truth of the Manhattan rental market. I was about to tell James that not only do we not have any inventory for him to see, but that we don’t work in this price range.

Now James might have been a real person needing a real apartment. While we were on the phone, James sent me a copy of his housing voucher. He told me all about his disability that made it hard for him to get around. And he was eager to hear from me with apartment ideas; this would continue over the next couple of weeks, calling me multiple times a day and texting me relentlessly.

However, from the start, I believed James was a “tester.” Take a look here at what New York City is spending more this year to “combat” income discriminiation when it comes to renting apartments: Three million dollars.

So what was there to do with him? I knew that I couldn’t brush him off. I spoke to our executive management team about my concerns. Immediately, my office gave me strict protocols to follow:

1. Indicate that we do indeed work with renters and that we work with people with housing vouchers.
2. Never ever ask about the source of income. James told me he gets housing vouchers, and based on that amount, no landlord is legally allowed to say no if the rent is in his budget.
3. Search for properties that fit his needs.
4. Send those listings to the renters.
5. Try to set up appointments to see those units, and even offer to preview these properties for him.
6. Importantly, never weed out properties in walk-up buildings, even if the renter tells you he cannot walk stairs or is in a wheelchair. Apparently, common sense needs to go out the window. Because tenants can choose to rent apartments on any floor they wish.
7. Instruct the tenant that you charge a commission when he/she rents an apartment.

I followed these instructions dutifully, all the while keeping a running tab how much time my team was spending on a deal that we not only have no expertise doing, and never do in the first place.

As a result, my team and I spent hours trying to even find out what was available. And after all that work, we had only one apartment to show him. We offered to shoot a video if he could not join us.

It took a while to even schedule that appointment. No rental agents seemed to want to show us the apartments. If the government seems hell-bent on identifying discrimination, why aren’t they calling the agents that represent these properties? Thes are the people who simply ignored my calls, or, the ones who asked me about my client and then stopped returning messages when I told them my client had a housing voucher.

Here’s what my conversation looked like when we were ready to move things along:

Ah The Commission

The commission conversation had slipped off the table early on, since my team had done a bunch of research and then you can see we had lost touch with James. However, when James finally circled back in December, the commission question came up. I had to tell him what the brokerage commission would be, between me and the other agent. Here’s a screenshot of that text chat:

And the conversation completely fizzled. What I mean is that he never responded again.

Until last month.

When We Knew It Was A Tester

I got a call from the James’ cell phone number while I was in a meeting. I let the call go to voicemail.

The odd thing was that James wasn’t James anymore. He had a completely different name, and acted like he had never spoken to me before. It was clear, then, that “James” had always been a tester.

Could it have been possible that James got rid of that phone number, and someone else got it, and that someone else also had a housing voucher, and that person got my contact information?

Sure. But also no.

What A Waste of Time (But Not Totally)

I’d like to think that I passed the test with flying colors.

But what a waste of time. I’m imagining someone who has been hired to read a script, spending his or her days calling real estate agents at certain firms, looking for “gotcha” proof that we discriminate against low-income renters.

After spending 8-10 hours hunting for James, though, I must say that I see their point. I just don’t think that we’re the right company to go after. We don’t represent landlords who have properties in the budget for these renters. And those agents who do? They definitely discriminate. I could hardly get them on the phone, much less get them to respond to emails.

There is discrimination going on. I have seen it on the sales side, and it’s happening here, too.

But even after saying that, Don’t agents get to qualify their clients? Part of that discernment is understanding a client’s budget, having nothing to do with the source of income—that is, where the budget comes from. I guess you could call that discrimination, but in the same way that someone decides to wear cashmere instead of cotton. Having “discriminating taste” is not a crime (though having poor fashion sense seems to be, based on most awards show runway commentary).

Shouldn’t agents have a choice about what price points in which they choose to work? Why would a sales agent want to work with rental clients? These are the questions that aren’t answered with a blunt instrument, wielded by finder’s fee-chasing law firms.

While we never get paid by the hour, but by the result, we won’t be able to get back the hours we spent on this. I hope the result is to avoid running around of these testers. Assuming that my firm will be sued at some point for running afoul of these testers, I look forward to demonstrating the lengths to which my team and I went to help “James Purcell.”

Post Script (Looky here, on the day emailed this story to 25,000 people)

As if on cue, I got a voicemail from the same guy, again. I attached a screen grab so you know I’m not fooling around. This guy acts as if I didn’t have 10 phone calls and 50 emails back and forth with him:

Yes, James. We help people with Section 8 get apartments. In fact, we already tried to help you.

How would you handle this situation?