When your religious belief mucks up selling your house.

user1977

TBagpuss said:

user1977 said:

TBagpuss said:

Murphybear said:

I read this and was horrified.

I genuinely do not understand why who you sell your house to really matters, you won’t  be living there any more.  

I’m glad the EA removed this property from their books.  Hopefully no other EA will take it on but I can’t see that happening

From a legal perspective, I suspect that it would be unlawful for an estate agency, as a business, to discriminate on  the basis of sexuality,(or any other protected characteristic)  but it would not be unlawful for private individuals selling their house to do so.

No, I can't see an exemption for privately-arranged sales (or lettings).

No nothing direct relating to sales but I thought there were some elements of the act that relate to providing services etc where there may be a difference depending on whether you are acting in a private, personal capacity or not. but I may well be mis-remembering. 

Yes, there are exemptions under some other provisions (e.g. you can specify what gender of lodger you want, though not "no dogs/blacks/Irish") but I don't think they apply if you're selling a property.

doodling

Hi,

user1977 said:

TBagpuss said:

Murphybear said:

I read this and was horrified.

I genuinely do not understand why who you sell your house to really matters, you won’t  be living there any more.  

I’m glad the EA removed this property from their books.  Hopefully no other EA will take it on but I can’t see that happening

From a legal perspective, I suspect that it would be unlawful for an estate agency, as a business, to discriminate on  the basis of sexuality,(or any other protected characteristic)  but it would not be unlawful for private individuals selling their house to do so.

No, I can't see an exemption for privately-arranged sales (or lettings).

Sales of property are expressly covered by the Act so discriminating when selling a property is illegal no matter who the property owner is.  Once the owners identified that they would not sell to a same sex couple then the estate agents would also be in contravention of the act if they continued to represent them.  They are likely to have difficulty finding another estate agent.

TBagpuss

TripleH said:

TXC said:

As abhorrent as I think this is, and I truly do. 

The fact remains that we all have the right to sell (or not sell) our own property to whomever we like.

There are tons of posts on here along the lines of "we sold our property to x couple because we really liked them", "we didn't accept y offer because the seller didn't seem (delete as applicable)

The views of the vendor in this scenario have absolutely no place in today's society, and they should have gone about this in a completely different way. But the fact remains that legally they've done nothing wrong (morally - absolutely)

I think legally they might have? (discrimination due to sexual orientation). The error they made was stating that was the reason for refusal.

I disagree with their stated reason.

I also think the discrimination rules are poorly thought out because you can get trapped in a stalemate situation of each party causing discrimination to the other (as in the Irish bakery scenario) but I suspect that is politicians passing the buck by getting praise for wide social reform but leaving the detail for the courts to fix.

 

I don't know that it is that the rules are poorly thought out, it's the same with other human rights, there is often a balance of competing rights so it's rare for there to be an absolute right.

There are obvious situation where there are competing rights - and it would be very difficult to frame a law that covered all situations - there are lots of other scenarios where the statutory law sets out the key principles and then courts have to determine how they apply in specific cases. 

Chris_English

TheJP said:

Chris_English said:

TheJP said:

Murphybear said:

I read this and was horrified.

I genuinely do not understand why who you sell your house to really matters, you won’t  be living there any more.  

I’m glad the EA removed this property from their books.  Hopefully no other EA will take it on but I can’t see that happening

Who I sold my house to was a major factor in whose offer I accepted. I had amazing neighbours and I wanted to make sure that whoever bought the house would be decent people.

To say they are wrong based on their religious beliefs is discrimination in itself. Its an unpleasant scenario.

But they are wrong, and deserve to be shamed for what they have done.

I didn't say they were right. I replied to the comment regarding whether who you sell your house matters. It does, its one of many factors on how you decide to sell to. As I said my neighbours are great people and i would want to ensure that whoever i sold to would be equally as good a neighbour as we were.

OK, but you’re implying that this couple wouldn’t be great neighbours, based on their sexuality.

theartfullodger

Age discrimination is permitted with housing (eg all those blocks of retirement homes with minimum age rules).

But not of the LGBTQ+ variety....

theoretica

When your religious belief mucks up selling your house.

Interesting choice of title - I was only really thinking of it as 'When someone else's religious belief mucks up your house purchase'

TripleH

TBagpuss, I agree with you. Sorry I worded it badly. The legislation feels like beta legislation being released. It workd, we look great for creating it, but we'll leave it for the users to fix the bugs.

Admittedly, it would be hard to write it regardless.

I almost feel it needs the same approach as the Australian tax authorities have. There where there is a point of contention on legislation, they take it to court and pay your fees and let a third party (judge) decide the outcome.

TheJP

Chris_English said:

TheJP said:

Chris_English said:

TheJP said:

Murphybear said:

I read this and was horrified.

I genuinely do not understand why who you sell your house to really matters, you won’t  be living there any more.  

I’m glad the EA removed this property from their books.  Hopefully no other EA will take it on but I can’t see that happening

Who I sold my house to was a major factor in whose offer I accepted. I had amazing neighbours and I wanted to make sure that whoever bought the house would be decent people.

To say they are wrong based on their religious beliefs is discrimination in itself. Its an unpleasant scenario.

But they are wrong, and deserve to be shamed for what they have done.

I didn't say they were right. I replied to the comment regarding whether who you sell your house matters. It does, its one of many factors on how you decide to sell to. As I said my neighbours are great people and i would want to ensure that whoever i sold to would be equally as good a neighbour as we were.

OK, but you’re implying that this couple wouldn’t be great neighbours, based on their sexuality.

No I didn't. I'm saying that I have a choice who I want to sell my house to, sexuality has no bearing on that decision. Just for the record I agree that its not right that the couple are deemed unfit buyers based on their sexuality. 

TBagpuss

user1977 said:

TBagpuss said:

user1977 said:

TBagpuss said:

Murphybear said:

I read this and was horrified.

I genuinely do not understand why who you sell your house to really matters, you won’t  be living there any more.  

I’m glad the EA removed this property from their books.  Hopefully no other EA will take it on but I can’t see that happening

From a legal perspective, I suspect that it would be unlawful for an estate agency, as a business, to discriminate on  the basis of sexuality,(or any other protected characteristic)  but it would not be unlawful for private individuals selling their house to do so.

No, I can't see an exemption for privately-arranged sales (or lettings).

No nothing direct relating to sales but I thought there were some elements of the act that relate to providing services etc where there may be a difference depending on whether you are acting in a private, personal capacity or not. but I may well be mis-remembering. 

Yes, there are exemptions under some other provisions (e.g. you can specify what gender of lodger you want, though not "no dogs/blacks/Irish") but I don't think they apply if you're selling a property.

That's probably what I was thinking of. I seem to recall in the B&B case there were arguments about whether the fact that it was the owners house meant they could discriminate, and the fact that they were running a business was relevant, but it's a while ago and I don't recall all the details. 

In this instance, I can understand why the couple are not planning to sue, as it would take time and energy and money they may not want to use that way, but it sounds as though they probably could. 

I also really wish that people like the sellers who purport to be Christian would make the effort to better understand their own religious book in full rather than cherry picking quotes out of context to uphold their prejudices..

Keep_pedalling

theoretica said:

When your religious belief mucks up selling your house.

Interesting choice of title - I was only really thinking of it as 'When someone else's religious belief mucks up your house purchase'

Interesting point, although I think the buyers will have a much easier time in finding another house than the sellers will have finding an alternative EA.