Upsold
Real Estate Agents, Prices, and Neighborhood Inequality
"In recent years, urban sociologists have paid increasing attention to how people make decisions—about housing, schools, job finding, and more. Besbris makes a powerful contribution to this work by examining how people decide what to buy, why they often end up paying more than they expected, and how realtors play a bigger role in the process than realized. Upsold is based on a remarkable amount of data, including interviewers with buyers, realtors, and others, and quantitative analyses of the spatial patterns of realtor concentration. But perhaps its most intriguing sources of data are its direct, tag-along observations of the interaction between buyer and realtor as they make their round, an interaction where, as the author argues, the price and purchase decisions are actually produced. The book reveals the fascinating ways these costly decisions end up being not only less rational but also less individual, more emotional, and far more interpersonally determined than many have supposed. A contribution to the sociological study of economic decisions, of taste, of neighborhoods, of network brokerage, and of housing, Upsold is wonderfully wide-ranging in its implications."
Economics and Business: Economics--Urban and Regional
Sociology: Occupations, Professions, Work | Social Organization--Stratification, Mobility | Urban and Rural Sociology
You may purchase this title at these fine bookstores. Outside the USA, see our international sales information.