If you wake up in your “master bedroom” — you are apparently not woke.
Following the lead of several U.S. realty groups, the Toronto Regional Real Estate Board last week announced it would stop using “master” citing the word’s ties to slavery as well as racist and sexist connotations.
Instead, the word “primary” will be used when describing the main or principal bedroom in homes, the CBC reported.
“What this will mean for the consumer and realtors is that property listings will now reference ‘primary’ where it used to reference ‘master’ as the main or principal bedroom,” TRREB President Lisa Patel said in a statement.
The US has seen a reckoning over the term “master bedroom” over the past year in the wake of George Floyd’s death and the resulting Black Lives Matter protests.
In July, the Houston Association of Realtors announced it would stop using the word on its listings database, in favor of “primary bedroom” or “primary bathroom,” KPRC reported.
The change came after several years of review prompted by members of the association, who asked for the use of the term to be looked at.
“The overarching message was that some members were concerned about how the terms might be perceived by some other agents and consumers,” HAR said in a statement.
“The consensus was that Primary describes the rooms equally as well as Master while avoiding any possible misperceptions.”
Association members could still use “master” to describe a space in a home if they felt it was appropriate, HAR said.
In Michigan, the Greater Lansing Association of Realtors adopted the change back in December, the Lansing State Journal reported at the time.
Still, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development in 1995 determined that “master bedroom” didn’t violate fair housing laws. That’s a key reason why the National Association of Realtors hasn’t created a policy on its usage.
In a statement Monday, the NAR said that while it had “seen no evidence of any historical connection of this phrase to slavery or other forms of discrimination, we have no objection to individual MLS and Realtor® associations making decisions to use other terminology.”
The Real Estate Board of New York in August was also considering whether to get rid of the word from its online platform that organizes listings data from brokerages around the city, The New York Times reported.
The change in terminology for Toronto will apply to any entries on the organization’s Multiple Listing Service (MLS), as well as on TRREB.ca and on its platform where realtors share forms with clients.
It follows the Canadian Real Estate Association swapping out the word “master” for “primary” on Realtor.ca in October, based on recommendations from the country’s Real Estate Standards Organization.