Don't undervalue the meaning of home ownership...

I read an interesting obituary from the SunTimes today about black Realtor pioneer Charles W. Sullivan. I'd never heard of the gentleman, just clicked on the link to the story. It seems he was a pioneering African-American Realtor who began his career in the mid-20th century when African-Americans were still dealing with a lot of the restrictive covenants on housing and general discrimination from different parts of the housing and lending industry.

It's important to keep stories like this in mind. Hopefully we're beyond some of stuff that Mr. Sullivan dealt with some 50 years later. Although, I still see the studies coming from various fair housing groups regarding real estate agents' differing treatment of various minority groups versus whites. But even more, we're not selling cars here. Homeownership can still be a huge life step for those new immigrants or the new divorcee starting life anew or the young couple out on their own for their first time.

So lets not just go through the motions on all these transactions, home ownership is significant and lets treat it as such!