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  • A Nation of Realtors¯: A Cultural History of the Twentieth-Century American Middle Class
  • Marina Moskowitz
Jeffrey M. Hornstein . A Nation of Realtors¯: A Cultural History of the Twentieth-Century American Middle Class. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2005. xi + 252 pp. ISBN 0-8223-3528-X, $79.95 (cloth); 0-8223-3540-9, $22.95 (paper).

For many people who study the culture of American business, a mention of real estate will conjure up Sinclair Lewis's fictional creation George F. Babbitt, the title character of the 1922 novel Babbitt. I was reminded, when reading Jeffrey Hornstein's A Nation of Realtors®, that Lewis at one point used a different working title: "Population 300,000." Between these two titles lay the relationship between the character of the Realtor and the community that the Realtor, and his peers, helped build. While Lewis ultimately chose to focus on the character, Hornstein holds two projects in remarkable balance. One details the collective character of those involved in real estate as they felt their way along a bumpy and frequently forked path to a professional and credentialed status. The other examines the process by [End Page 410] which these men and women helped to identify and codify the community known as the American middle class.

Hornstein draws these two projects together in his excellent case study of professionalization and class consolidation. He asserts that in the twentieth century the broadening self-assessment of the American people as middle class was based on the twin identities of professionals and homeowners, or at least aspiration to those positions. Building on this assertion, Hornstein argues that Realtors occupied a unique role in defining the middle class by embodying the first quality, professionalism, and facilitating the second, homeownership. The title "Realtor" was itself a product of a campaign to distinguish the specialized knowledge and authority of competent agents from a somewhat dubious past in the perception of the general public. By adapting models of organization and behavior from other professions, Realtors protected both themselves and their potential clients and made themselves indispensable in American society. Hornstein shows that from the Progressive Era to the present day, Realtors have been among the many reformers who prove that self-interest and the public good are not mutually exclusive.

As convincing as Hornstein's overarching thesis is, this book also provides a careful and richly detailed institutional history. The book charts the rise of local real estate boards, their banding together into the National Association of Real Estate Boards (NAREB), later to be renamed the National Association of Realtors, the evolution of listing practices and licensing, and many of the compelling characters who drove these processes forward. Within this narrative of professional cohesion, Hornstein demonstrates that business as an entity cannot be divorced from the realms of either education, which can be used to underpin professional status, or government, which may ultimately regulate commercial transactions. In these discussions Hornstein's text is reminiscent of classic work on the "new" profession of engineering, such as Edwin Layton's Revolt of the Engineers (1971) and David Noble's America by Design (1977). However, as Hornstein shows, the involvement of the Realtors in the daily life and in the most important purchase of the American consumer gave their professional trajectory greater resonance and influence on the course of middle-class consolidation.

Hornstein also shows that the professionalism that makes its way to the center of a middle-class web of values is hard work. Although A Nation of Realtors® is pithy and concise, Hornstein does not sacrifice the complexity of his story. There are significant debates that affected both the internal dynamics of NAREB and the overall public impression that Realtors held: Should real estate boards be more like fraternal organizations or hold real regulatory power? Should [End Page 411] licensing be based on personal talents or measurable skills? Should Realtors act solely as brokers between buyers and sellers or take an active role in community development? The varied approaches are indicative of larger middle-class concerns of character, credentials, and community.

Perhaps the biggest dichotomy in the field, however, lies in the gendered approaches to involvement in real estate...

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