Apartment hunting

REAL ESTATE, REALTORS and REALTY

Two of the nouns listed below mean land or homes and one means the person who sells or helps to rent land or homes. Which ones are which?

1) real estate
2) realtor
3) realty


A realtor is a licensed person who can sell homes and land and rent apartments. A realtor helps to pick the right people for the apartment for the people who own the apartment. A realtor checks that the new tenant (person moving into an apartment) doesn't have bad credit (owes too much money). A realtor can only look at a person's credit and cannot refuse to rent an apartment because of a person's race, skin color, age, religion, gender or because a person may be a homosexual or lesbian. In the United States, it is against the law to discriminate against people for these reasons and it is especially bad to discriminate against people seeking housing.

Real estate or Realty is land and/or homes or condominiums (apartments that one can buy). These two words mean the same thing. When you are talking about someone who can sell land and homes, you call him or her a "real estate broker".