A new study by researchers at The University of Alabama has found that gender plays a role in commercial real estate transactions due to a common affinity bias among property owners. The study, which was published in the Journal of Real Estate Research, analyzed office building transactions from 2016-2018 in the United States and used a software application to identify the gender of buying and listing agents and clients based on their names.
The researchers found that properties listed by female agents were sold at a significant discount compared to those marketed by men, and individual female agents were involved in far fewer property transactions.
However, when sales were adjusted for property attributes, there was no significant difference in price or time on the market between male and female real estate agents.
One possible explanation for these findings is an affinity bias known as homophily, which refers to the preference for working with people like oneself, such as in terms of gender, race, or ethnicity. In the commercial real estate industry, most sellers and buyers are men, and they also tend to deal in larger, higher-end properties.
While these findings establish evidence of gender performance neutrality, individual female agents are still involved in significantly fewer property transactions than their male peers. The researchers attribute this to an artifact of homophilic behavior rather than an issue of professional achievement.
The study is the first empirical investigation of gender inequities within commercial real estate transactions. The researchers started with a dataset of office building transactions from 2016-2018 in the United States. They used a software application to identify the gender of buying and listing real estate agents, as well as buying and listing clients, based on their names. Then, they studied differences in factors such as property price, time on market and transaction volume between genders.