This is Only the Beginning…

We are only a few weeks into legislative sessions and special and primary elections are occurring around the country. 2018 is going to be a busy year for REALTOR® advocacy. As NAR increases its influence in this uncertain legislative, regulatory and political environment, we’ll need all hands on deck.

Our first step was the reorganization of the former Community & Political Affairs and Government Affairs teams into a singular Advocacy Group. We’ve chosen Bill Malkasian to lead this new team as Chief Advocacy Officer, bringing greater synergy to the association’s federal, state, and local advocacy efforts. We are looking forward to Bill bringing his leadership and expertise as executive officer at the Wisconsin REALTOR® Association for nearly 37 years and overseeing political strategic planning for state and local advocacy outreach at NAR to his new role.

As you might remember we are coming off the heels of the last tax reform calls for action (CFAs), where more than 213,000 members took action. Our Advocacy Everywhere program, which allows state and local REALTOR® associations to better engage REALTORS® and consumers in CFAs, has hit the ground running!  We’ve had more than 10 CFAs at the state and local level since the beginning of the year, working on your behalf on issues such as sales tax on services, changes to Real Estate Broker License Law, rental restrictions, tax preemption bills that restricts voter rights and more.

This is only the beginning. With midterm elections ahead of us, we expect to see a lot of activity on all three levels of government. We’ll need your help. Be ready to take action at a moment’s notice by signing up for the REALTOR® Party Mobile Alerts, NAR’s advocacy texting platform. To sign up, simply text the word REALTORS to 30644 on your mobile phone.

We are looking forward to having an exciting year.

This is Our Moment; Let’s Own It!