Fresh off Election Day, it was great to see nearly 20,000 people attending the 2019 REALTORS® Conference & Expo in San Francisco. With a new Leadership Team in place, we can’t think of a better place to get started on the hard work ahead of us. San Francisco is a city at the center of a technological revolution that is changing the way we live, work, and play. Our industry is no exception.
We are witnesses to a massive shift in the real estate field in today’s consumer-driven, on-demand economy. Of course, we already know this! We also know that change and opportunity walk hand-in-hand.
In the 1990s, technology companies were pouring millions into real estate while REALTORS® relied on printed listings with black-and-white photos. Today’s listings are in the cloud, and you can pull them up on your phone.
In the 2000s, when big banks threatened to create an anti-consumer, anti-competitive industry, REALTORS fought and won in 2009 when Congress passed a law preventing big banks from engaging in real estate brokerage.
Read and Download NAR’s 2020 Strategic Priorities
Of course we know how to manage change. Our business is change. You’ve changed the lives of the families you helped buy their first home, or the entrepreneur their first business. You’ve changed your communities through your generosity because REALTORS® reinvest in our neighborhoods. We know that giving enriches the giver as well as the recipient.
Times are changing—and opportunity is knocking. Now is the right time to focus on our industry and the communities we serve. From rent control and short-term rentals to housing supply and affordability, the issues facing our industry are unprecedented. By forging a new contract between NAR, REALTORS® , and our industry, I believe we can realized unprecedented success for ourselves as business owners, the communities where we work and live, and homeowners.
We invite you to review our 2020 priorities to get a better understanding of our strategic focus. You’ll be hearing a lot of the two specifically related to advocacy: Collaborating for positive impacts on housing equality and affordability and driving community development.
The changing times may change the way we do our work. But nothing can change one crucial element—the human element—that only REALTORS® can provide.
In the coming week, we’ll gather with state presidents, association executives, government affairs directors, and committee chairs and members at the REALTOR Party Training Conference in Austin, Texas, to further discuss the REALTOR® Party and advocacy objectives for success in 2020 during an intensive two days. We look forward to providing you an update and working together to inspire you to find your own story to tell and to help show the world “That’s Who We R.”
Comments(4)-
-
-
-
Ed Meyer says
atIt is nice to say we are for the consumer, however the plex-property owner is also a consumer. I am not sure how we can help the renter and the landlord at the same time when we have rigid controls. Another item to look at would be the large amount of paper work that both the buyer and seller are required to fill out and mostly to understand it. Sure the realtor is supposed to know what it all means, but with the changes coming in a fast time frame it is even hard for the so called professional to understand.
Robert Tavares says
atThe data industry is exploiting our everyday hands on attention we give to our clients and marketing techniques we use and make it look like their own. Result and implication they give YOU DON’T NEED a realtor.
Paul Dimmick says
atIn 2009 that was a big victory, but didn’t the bill expire in 2019? Is this why we are seeing Compass Realty (Compass Mortgage) and Rocket Realty (Quicken, Rocketmortgage)? If big banks are now allowed to be real estate brokerages, are we pushing back on this again?
Walter L Loveless says
atWe might need to weigh in on two of the long term drags on the market. The cost and financing of a college education eliminates hundreds of thousands of young first time home buyers. The negative pressure this creates on prices will only get worse it we fail to bring up a conversation about this elephant in the room. The second and more consequential but long term issue is that of poor public school systems. They are failing to educate our students. Little Rock isn’t that much different from public school systems across the U. S. About a third of our students drop out of school before graduating. Many due to the fact that their reading skills are so limited that they can’t perform at the higher grade levels. And, many more are given diplomas even though they fail the tests for their subjects. Washington D. C. is an example where a recent close examination revealed that many students are given the diploma just to keep graduation rates bearable. While various factions argue about who got us into this mess the children are failing to learn to read. If we took leadership I bet we encourage over a million citizens, not just Realtors, but those outside the Realtor Party to focus on children at the primary level so that they can master the skill of reading for comprehension. Little Rock’s poor public school system and high crime rate go hand in hand. The state of Arkansas took over the public school system about 5 years ago when we had 5 schools that failed to educate 50% of their students enough to meet minimum standards. Our schools defined success as getting to 51%. Condemning them to poor jobs, low credit ratings and an apartment existence. We need to give our youth a vision for success. Reading is the first step.