Sex and Selling: Agent Gender and Bargaining Power in the Resale Housing Market

Abstract

This paper uses a search model with Nash bargaining to identify various channels through which agent gender affects selling price and selling time in the resale market for houses. The theory is used in conjunction with the empirical model to infer agent bargaining power when dealing with the same or opposite sex agents on the other side of the transaction. The results reveal that sellers set higher listing prices when working with male agents, a pattern consistent with sellers’ ex ante beliefs that male agents enjoy greater expected bargaining power. Ex post agent bargaining power varies by sex and their role in the transaction. Female agents assisting buyers have stronger bargaining power when facing male listing agents than when facing female agents in rising or falling markets. The ex post bargaining power of male selling agents assisting buyers appears to be generally weaker than that of female listing agents.

Ethnicity in housing markets: Buyers, sellers and agents

“…Clearly, real estate agents can influence transaction outcomes. Previous studies of American markets consider how agent factors, including gender, experience, and geographic specialization, affect transactions (Abelson, et al., 1990; Pham, et al., 2021; Turnbull & Dombrow, 2007) but do not consider how an agent's cultural or ethnic background may influence transactions outcomes. Our sample of ethnically diverse agents allows us to look at agent performance in same‐ethnicity and cross‐ethnicity mixes of agents involved in the transaction as well as the buyers and sellers with whom they work.…”

The division of spoils in a booming industry

“…Turnbull and Waller (2018) show that this is not the case for top performing agents.3 Other relevant contributions to the literature on the male/female paradigm of negotiations includeAndersen, Marx, Nielsen, and Vesterlund, 2021;Hernandez-Arenaz and Iriberri, 2018;and Pham, Turnbull, and Waller, 2022. ECB Working Paper Series No 2709 / August 2022…”