Today, Governor Kathy Hochul signed legislation, S.536a/A.8077a, introduced by Senator Anna M. Kaplan (D-North Hills) and Assembly Member Danny O'Donnell (D-Morningside Heights), that updates the nearly century-old section of New York State law relating to real estate salespeople, striking antiquated, gender specific language, and replacing it with gender neutral language. The new law takes effect immediately.
Prior to enactment of the new law, the underlying section of the State's real property law, which regulates the real estate brokerage and sales professions and was written in 1927, included 85 references to "salesmen" and dozens of instances of gendered pronouns like he, him, and his. The law only included references to a "salesperson" in two places, and made no references to "saleswomen."
The legislation, S.536a/A.8077a, updates Article 12-A of the Real Property Law by:
- Changing all instances of the word salesman to salesperson
- Removing gendered language from the Article by removing references to "his or her" in favor of "their," change "himself" to "themselves," as well as appropriate changes in variations to these words.
According to studies by the New York State Association of Realtors (read here) and the National Association of Realtors (read here), men are actually a minority in the profession, with women representing 64% of Realtors nationally and in New York State. By removing gendered language from the State's real property law, the law will finally reflect the gender diversity of the real estate sales profession.