I've never understood why this is such a hard thing to figure out, although I am just as guilty of it as the next.  Saying my career is REALTOR® makes sense to the public but is not correct.  I am a real estate agent which is a mouthful!  Much like not being able to use MLS in websites in our area, the public doesn't know so continues to misuse the terms.  The only people who are being prevented from use are the members!  Ironic.

In their zeal for a slogan or URL, many REALTORS® don't realize the importance of protecting the trademark. If we don't protect it and it becomes "public" it will lose all its meaning.

i have read a lot about nar and the term realtor.

i have yet to see where being a realtor benefits either the agent or the client. did i miss something?
does nar provide training?

My goodness Tom, apparently you've missed a LOT!

There's not enough room or time on this forum to to list the thousands of hours of training that NAR makes available for their members.

If you truly want to educate yourself about what NAR provides that benefits both the client and their REALTORS, I suggest you visit www.Realtor.org and spend a few weeks reading about it.

Additionally NAR advocates for affordable real estate which has been discussed several times here and many, many times other places.

Just as a local example; NAR and my state association teamed up to defeat a bill that would impose a sales tax on professional fees, i.e. commissions, defeated a bill that would require an annual fee on professional licenses, defeated a bill that would impose an additional transfer tax on residential real estate trasfers, and lots of other things.

Additionally we pushed through the Tennessee General Assemply a bill to license home inspectors, create agency laws, require property disclosures, stricter license renewal requirements, and lots of other consumer friendly legislation.

That's just in the state of Tennessee; other states have done similar things for their REALTOR members and real estate consumers.

BTW, kudos to you for being involved in your groups to help and honor servicemen; that's a noble undertaking.

Jim - GREAT post and I really wish more people would understand the legitimate use of the trademark and what it stands for.  I have to say that I feel like NAR is a bit slow in taking action when they're made aware of people mis-using it.  It's so easy to check to see if the proposed use is acceptable or not, I don't know why more people don't check it out before investing time and money.

Ann

Jim,

This is my pet peeve now.  But there are so many violations that it just doesn't seem worth it to take the time to deal with.

I've studied the rules on how to use the term correctly but I'm still uncertain about the following rule.

When the MARKS are used in the text of brochures, pamphlets, newsletters or otherwise in the body of written material, the first use should be followed by a footnote or other reference to the effect that:

REALTOR^® is a federally registered collective membership mark which identifies a real estate professional who is a Member of the NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS^® and subscribes to its strict Code of Ethics

Does this mean when we write a post with REALTOR® that we have to do this?  I never see this being done so I have to assume that there's an exception for this requirement most of the time. 

Tim, I became aware of this rule just last fall and it really contributed to me ceasing to use the "R" word.  Our MLS has a like phrase that we have to use whenever we quote stats from the MLS.  It gets cumbersome.  I included the phrase once on a blog I wrote explaining the difference between REALTOR® and real estate agent.  Most of the time I'm not using REALTOR® anyway because I seldom talking about "member".  My statements usually are about agents or salespersons! 

thanks for the reply Jim

i have not read up on the subject...