Value fluidity and value anchoring: race, intermediaries and valuation in two housing markets.

This article examines how valuation processes in the U.S. housing market—specifically through the concepts of value fluidity and value anchoring—are shaped by interactions between consumers and market intermediaries such as real estate agents and appraisers, and how these processes reproduce racial–spatial inequalities. Drawing on ethnographic research in Houston, TX, and New York, NY, it shows that while consumers' valuation criteria are flexible and influenced by intermediaries (value fluidity), these valuations are simultaneously anchored in enduring racialized hierarchies that link neighborhood desirability and housing prices to racial composition (value anchoring). The study highlights intermediaries' pivotal role in shaping homebuyers' perceptions and decisions by invoking racialized stereotypes and spatial segregation, which contributes to persistent disparities in housing values between predominantly White neighborhoods and neighborhoods of color, especially middle-class Black and Latinx areas. The findings underscore the importance of focusing on intermediaries to understand how valuation practices sustain systemic racial inequalities in housing markets.