Such steering has been illegal since 1968, and the Department of Housing and Urban Development says it still is.

But HUD issued a letter of opinion that could have been interpreted otherwise, said Tom Hathaway, president of a buyer brokerage in Memphis, Tenn.

Mr. Hathaway sought an opinion from HUD, questioning whether buyer's agents should be exempt from the Fair Housing Act because of the exclusive relationship they have with their clients.

Elizabeth Julian, assistant secretary for fair housing and equal opportunity at HUD, responded Oct. 2 with a letter that Mr. Hathaway said gave him free rein to discard the Fair Housing Act. In it, she writes, "When prospective buyers, on their own initiative, explicitly inform their agent of a preference or a dispreference for particular neighborhoods with reference to a classification based on a protected class status, the agent would not make housing unavailable and, thus, would not violate [the law] merely by accommodating the clients' stated preference or dispreference."

In an Oct. 15 news release, Mr. Hathaway writes: "Agents who represent buyers can now feel free to answer all of their clients' questions related to neighborhood demographics including information involving the protected classes under HUD's discriminatory enforcement."

But that is not what HUD meant, Mrs. Julian said, and she issued a second letter to clarify the agency's position.

"I'd like to make clear what the letter did and did not say," she writes in the second letter, dated Nov. 8. "I would strongly advise against any agent or broker accommodating a request that a housing search be limited based on race or other protected-class terms."

The protected classes under the Fair Housing Act are race, color, national origin, sex, religion, familial status and handicaps.

Mr. Hathaway, former chief of enforcement for the Missouri Real Estate Commission, said he believes the Fair Housing Act requires changes because some Realtors have evolved into "exclusive buyer's brokers" at companies that do not represent sellers. Until the 1980s, virtually all real estate agents represented sellers.

"It was a distressing issue for us to have to deal with," Mrs. Julian said, "because when you're committed to the principles of fair housing and equal opportunity, you understand what that means and you understand how many different ways it is possible to get around it anyway. But you never want to give any encouragement to people who would seem to be supporting discriminatory housing choices."

Jill Levine, an attorney with Mr. Hathaway's company, contended that buyers should be able to get such information from their agent.

"If a buyer comes in and asks the agent to look at a certain area, the agents aren't doing anything wrong by showing them those areas," she said.

"I think [the first HUD letter] shows that there are some definite differences between what a buyer's agent can do vs. what they call a traditional agent," she said. "It's pretty much the first recognition, by a government agency anyway, that there is a difference between agents who represent buyers and agents who work in the traditional real estate industry."

It gives exclusive agents the right to limit the search to what the client asks for, she said.

Mrs. Julian disagrees.

"I think that it's absolutely inappropriate for [Mr. Hathaway] to suggest that this issue gives his company or any buyer's agents something they have not had before, and certainly not exclusive buyer's agents vs. other buyer's agents," Mrs. Julian said.

"There is nothing about the conclusion that we reached in the letter that distinguishes between buyer's agents and seller's agents. They're both covered by the Fair Housing Act, they both have an obligation not to steer," Mrs. Julian said in a telephone interview.

Having the right to answer questions has to do with the code of ethics or the contractual relationship between the agent and the client. It has nothing to do with the Fair Housing Act, she said.

"I studied all the issues relative to representing the buyer, and one thing that kept bothering me was that there were all these laws written that said that real estate agents couldn't answer certain questions," Mr. Hathaway said. "Yet I couldn't understand why because the whole process of buying a home is really an act of discrimination of one kind or another."

The Fair Housing Act of 1968 established guidelines for Realtors regarding the seven protected classes, and the consequences for violating the act are severe. Realtors can lose their license or be sued if it is proven that they limited a home search based upon racial or religious criteria.

Mr. Hathaway said he wanted to know if he as an exclusive buyer's agent could do such a search legally.

For instance, if he is asked by a client whether any minorities live in a specific neighborhood, he said, he should be able to do some research and answer the question.

"Then if my client asks, 'What effect could this have on the resale of my home?' I could provide him historical information about how the neighborhood has changed over a certain period of time and how that has affected prices there," he said.

The National Association of Realtors tells agents in its training manual that they have no obligation to disclose information regarding race or other protected classes. And Realtors have sold millions of homes since 1968 under those conditions.

"But we felt we had an obligation to answer these questions honestly," Mr. Hathaway said. "So we wrote the letter to HUD because 30 years ago, when HUD came out with these rules, they were not even looking at the possibility of a buyer ever being represented."

"There are sometimes things that, while technically not prohibited by law, are not in the spirit of the law and not something that we're going to endorse or complement as appropriate behavior," Mrs. Julian said.

Stephen Israel, an exclusive buyer's agent in Bethesda, said he believes Mr. Hathaway is in danger of violating the law. "It's really unfortunate that the question was ever asked in the first place," said Mr. Israel, president of the Buyer's Edge.

"Mr. Hathaway's letter invites agents to cross the line and mistakenly violate the law," he said.

If a buyer requested a Jewish neighborhood, Mr. Israel said, he wouldn't know how to find a neighborhood that accurately fit that description.

"How would we know if a neighborhood right next to a synagogue is a Jewish neighborhood, and what even constitutes a 'Jewish community' anyway?" he asked. "Buyers should use community resources to determine where they want to live, not their Realtor."