You Can Talk About Schools Again: HUD's 2026 Guidance and Denver Agents
- Jerad Larkin
- 2 hours ago
- 7 min read
A buyer asks about the elementary school two blocks from the listing, and half the agents in Denver Metro freeze. Years of risk-management training taught them that schools are a landmine, so they deflect, send a link, and change the subject.
That reflex is now out of step with federal guidance. HUD put it in writing this spring, and most Colorado agents have not updated their answer.
Can real estate agents talk about schools with buyers?
Yes. Under HUD's April 2026 guidance, Denver real estate agents can share objective school and crime data with buyers, as long as the same information is offered to every client without personal opinions or steering.
On April 24, 2026, HUD's Office of Fair Housing and Equal Opportunity issued a Dear Colleague letter stating that sharing information about neighborhood crime rates and school quality is not a Fair Housing Act violation when that information is shared consistently and without discriminatory intent. That is a real shift from the way most brokerages have trained agents for the last decade, which was closer to say nothing at all.
As a Sales Executive with Chicago Title Colorado, I work with Denver Metro agents on marketing and compliance questions every week, and this one comes up constantly. The confusion is understandable. The line between helpful and unlawful is real, but it is not where most agents think it is. Here is what changed, what did not, and the exact language I would use if a buyer asked me about schools tomorrow.
What Actually Changed in April 2026?
Nothing in the Fair Housing Act itself changed. What changed is HUD's public position on what agents are allowed to say, and it landed as a correction to years of overcautious industry advice.
What HUD Told Agents
HUD's letter said plainly that providing objective, factual, and verifiable information about neighborhood crime statistics or school performance does not violate the Fair Housing Act. Publicly available data, including crime reports, safety trends, and school ratings, can be handed to a buyer. The condition is consistency. The same kind of information, offered to every client, regardless of who they are.
HUD also argued that withholding this information leaves buyers in the dark, and that agents had been discouraged from answering reasonable questions. HousingWire reported that NAR responded its policies already align with the new stance.
Why HUD and NAR Ended Up Crosswise
According to RISMedia's coverage of the letter, HUD accused NAR of imposing what it called a professional gag order by advising agents to avoid offering opinions on crime rates and school quality. NAR's position is that its guidance was always about opinions and subjective characterizations, not data.
Both things can be true. The industry shorthand, never talk about schools, was never the actual rule. It was a simplification that was easy to teach and easy to follow, and it quietly cost Denver Metro buyers information they were entitled to have.
What Is Steering, and Why Do Schools Set It Off?
Steering is the practice of directing a buyer toward or away from a neighborhood because of a protected characteristic. Under the Fair Housing Act those include race, color, religion, sex, national origin, familial status, and disability. Colorado's own anti-discrimination law adds more, including sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, and source of income.
Schools trip the wire because school data correlates with demographics. When an agent says a school is good or bad, courts have treated that kind of coded commentary as potential evidence of discriminatory intent. The word good is doing work the agent may not have intended it to do, and intent is not the only thing that gets measured after the fact.
NAR's FAQs on steering, crime, and schools walk through the distinction in detail, and it is worth reading once rather than relying on what your broker said in 2019. The short version: facts are fine, characterizations are risky, and inconsistency is what gets people sued.
How Should Denver Agents Answer the School Question?
Lead With Sources, Not Opinions
Your job is to point buyers to the data and let them decide what good means for their family. A buyer with a child on an IEP, a buyer who wants a strong arts program, and a buyer who plans to homeschool all define a good school differently. You are not qualified to rank them, and you gain nothing by trying.
Give Every Client the Same Menu
Consistency is the entire defense. Build one standard resource list and give it to every buyer before anyone asks. If you already run a structured buyer consultation, this belongs in the same packet as your net sheet and your representation agreement. When the list goes out automatically, you never have to remember who got what.
Write the Script Once and Use It Every Time
Here is the language I would use, and agents across Denver Metro are welcome to take it word for word:
“I don't rate schools, because what makes a school right for your family is specific to your family. What I can do is send you the state's official performance data, the district's enrollment and boundary tools, and the district contact so you can talk to them directly. I give the same list to every client. Once you've looked, I'm happy to talk through what you found.”
That answer is honest, useful, and defensible. It also makes you sound like a professional instead of someone dodging a question, which is how the old script landed with a lot of buyers.
Where Do Colorado Agents Get Objective School Data?
The Colorado Department of Education publishes school and district data through SchoolView, its public portal. That is your primary source, it is free, and it is the one to lead with.
The School and District Performance Frameworks are Colorado's official ratings, built on academic achievement, academic growth, and postsecondary and workforce readiness. They publish as interactive dashboards and downloadable PDFs, which means you can attach the actual document instead of paraphrasing it. Attaching the source is always safer than summarizing it.
Add the district's own enrollment and boundary tool to your list. Boundaries shift, choice and open-enrollment programs vary widely across Denver Metro districts, and a home inside a boundary today is not guaranteed to be inside it in three years. Never confirm a school assignment yourself. Send the buyer to the district, the same way I tell agents to send ownership and lien questions to my team at Chicago Title Colorado instead of guessing from a portal listing page.
How Do You Build Neighborhood Content Without Crossing the Line?
The same rule governs your marketing. Objective, sourced, consistent. A neighborhood page that links to state school data and district enrollment pages is genuinely useful and stays clean. A neighborhood page that calls an area family-friendly is doing something else entirely, because family-friendly reads as a familial status signal.
If you are building out local content, neighborhood pages on your own website are still the highest-leverage SEO play in Denver Metro, and a sourced school resource section is exactly the kind of block that makes them rank and convert at the same time.
It matters even more with relocation buyers, who research Denver for months before they contact anyone. Schools are usually in their first five searches. The page that answers the question with real sources is the page that earns the call.
The same discipline applies at an open house, where the school question comes up more than almost any other. Keep the resource list on your phone, offer it before you are asked, and note that you sent it. Documentation is what turns a good habit into a defense.
What About AI-Written Listing and Social Copy?
AI is where most fair housing problems will come from over the next two years. Language models are trained on decades of real estate copy that is full of exactly the phrases you are trying to avoid. Walkable. Family-friendly. Safe. Up-and-coming. Great schools. If you paste a listing description straight out of a chatbot, you own whatever it wrote.
Put the guardrail in the tool, not in your memory. If you have built a custom GPT for your marketing, add an explicit instruction that it must never characterize schools, crime, or safety, and must never use protected class language. Then spot-check the output, because instructions drift and models get updated without telling you.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can a real estate agent tell a buyer which schools are good in Denver?
No. Agents should not rank or characterize schools. Under HUD's 2026 guidance you can share objective, verifiable school performance data with every client consistently, but an assessment of quality is an opinion and can be used as evidence of steering.
What school information can Colorado real estate agents legally share?
Publicly available, factual data. That includes Colorado Department of Education performance framework ratings, achievement and growth data published on SchoolView, and district enrollment and boundary tools. Share the source, not your interpretation of it, and share it with every client.
Is it steering to show a buyer listings in only one Denver school district?
It can be. If you narrow a buyer's options based on assumptions about them or a protected characteristic, that is steering. If the buyer independently specifies a district and you document that instruction in writing, you are following a client directive rather than making one.
Do Colorado agents have fair housing rules beyond federal law?
Yes. The Colorado Anti-Discrimination Act protects additional classes beyond the federal list, including sexual orientation, gender identity, marital status, and source of income. Local ordinances can add more. When federal, state, and local rules differ, follow the strictest one.
How should agents handle schools in listing remarks and social captions?
Same rule. Cite or link the state source and skip the adjectives. Naming a district factually is fine if the buyer verifies it. Avoid family-friendly, safe, and great schools entirely, because those read as characterizations, and family-friendly carries a familial status problem on top of that.
If you want the resource list, the script, and a swap sheet of safer listing language, reach out and I will send it over. I build these for Denver Metro agents and I teach this material in my classes across Colorado. Tools, guides, and my upcoming class schedule are all at milehightitleguy.com.
Jerad Larkin
Sales Executive | Chicago Title Colorado
milehightitleguy.com
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