You may have noticed that our social media and online presence is a lot less about real estate lately. This is because we feel nothing is more important right now than standing in solidarity with our Black community and all those working hard to create systemic change that fosters racial equity.
We are deeply saddened and outraged by the tragic deaths of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, and locally, Manuel Ellis, as well as the countless other Black people and people of color who have been victims of murder and brutality by police.
Silence and inaction are no longer acceptable. Speaking up and taking action is required to fight injustice, inequality, and racism. We stand behind and acknowledge that Black Lives Matter!
As we look internally and come to the realization of our own failures as individuals and as we listen, learn, and digest history, we realize as a country for the last 400 years we have failed our Black community.
While you will start to see a return of our regular real estate articles, postings, newsletters, announcements for our client’s properties and real estate news, please make no mistake, we are not moving on. We will be boosting and yelling and amplifying the voices of our BIPOC communities, so that we can better understand how to be a part of the needed activism.
Moving forward, we will share our commitment to this solidarity with you, and hope that you will become a part of this important movement with us. We will ensure that we use our influence and platform as business owners, bloggers, and real estate professionals working with countess valued clients, our close friends, colleagues, vendors and contractors, to speak up and be accountable to what’s right. We also will be a resource to our community that we love and work within day in and day out. Seattle is our home, and it is our duty to not only listen, learn, and unlearn ourselves, but also to share information, tools and resources that everyone can use to strengthen the solidarity with our Black community here, and across the world.
In real estate we know a home means so much more than just a place to live. It’s a place to come together with friends, family and build community. A home is also a vehicle for families to build a financial platform of stability, pride, create wealth, and establish a family legacy. Due to long standing institutional racism in our country, homeownership has been very difficult and even impossible for many of those in Black communities and other communities of color.
We also know that for real estate, two very similar homes can be vastly different in their value just based on what neighborhood or zip code they are in. This also means a family’s ability to create wealth utilizing their home as their largest asset, is determined by their zip code and which neighborhood they live in. We want to help this to change. Black Lives Matter and Black Homes Matter and Black dreams matter.
We are in the very early stages of creating our personal road map to help contribute, and empower this important Black Lives Matter work, but please know we are committed to having open dialog, participating in public outreach, engaging with our Black community, and being a resource. You will see us incorporating and sharing things within our daily business practices as well as our personal lives that we feel are worthy of reading, learning from, listening to, as well as recommendations for great Black owned businesses and community organizations a who need our support, our funds, and our time.
We also recognize that our very own industry of real estate is predominantly made up of white people. Why is this? This can’t be overlooked. We have to be honest and look inward within ourselves and our industry to see how we can help foster opportunities for Black and other people of color to enter our rewarding industry and find success and flourish as real estate professionals.
We acknowledge that systemic change is long overdue, and we must be honest about racism and white privilege and its role of perpetuating systemic disparities and inequities in our BIPOC communities.
Thank you for your friendship, and loyal support in our business over the years, and now we hope you’ll stand with is in support of this important work. There is much work to be done.
Marco and Loren Kronen