It has been an event filled 4 days for me so far at NAR. I go to both D.C. and the annual convention every year either as an local or state officer or some NAR duties. This year I was honored to be sworn in as a Regional VP for my four state region, and finished up a Chairmanship of the State Leadership Ideas Exchange Council. I am a great believer of contributing to NAR leadership and ideas, and I prefer to work on the inside for change instead of whining on the outside and doing nothing. FYI, I used to be one of those whiners many years ago and I finally said to myself no organization will every be perfect nor should it conform to what I think it ought to be, rather what we think it ought to be. If you don't believe that democracy exist within NAR then show up for a Board of Directors meeting especially in the last three years. This is not a full report but some highlights:
ZipLogix is now basically free: NAR like others always others has to allocate funds to where it goes best and other than advocacy which is topnotch, member benefits is right in there. This year NAR negotiated that Zip would be free for all NAR REALTOR® members other than Mobile and Docusign. They haven't said what the price would be for these two but Dale Stinton CEO said they would be dramatically reduced. This automatically save my state association $26,000 a year because we provide free Zip Forms to small boards in Oklahoma. Cutting cost for REALTORS® is always a good thing.
Transportation Bill looks to go down to defeat: Right now we are at 18.7% of the 1.1 million members answering the call to action to defeat the robbing of Fannie and Freddie to pay for the transportation bill. This would have had a serious impact on their financial wherewith all to fund and expand loans to homeowners. This is working and shows why when you are the largest trade organization in the world if members are truly engaged we can do great things in insuring homeowners rights including access to more loans not less. It also shows that money is not everything in D.C. but a few hundred thousand REALTOR® voters do matter to politicians. And thanks to our partners like lenders to be their with us.
Just saw Active Brad: I was on the trade show floor and who would I bump into but our old friend Brad Andersohn. It is happy and doing his passion, online virtual university education out of the EXP Realty franchise. It is open to all people not just EXP and he is doing great things. He also presented the university to NAR for connected education for our members and even built an example virtual building for NAR. Brad is still one of my favorite people I have meet in the industry and check out the campus at http://RETechCampus.com. You can enter from the non-EXP side.
Educational Opportunities: Again with all the meetings it is hard to get to some great classes but so many at convention are worthwhile. I sat through Creating an Exit Strategy which is a passion I have when I teach real estate in Oklahoma. Leigh Brown did her usual folksy 7 deadly sins of REALTORS® and much more. It is also terrific to sit through presentations like with Lawrence Yun NAR chief economist and in all I have seen from him over the years, no spin. What was great was the statistics on the under 33 crowd. They still in overwhelming numbers want to own a home, believe it is a big part of The American Dream, and they want to use REALTORS®.
FHA changes coming: This is great news for places like Florida which is more condo oriented than say Oklahoma but how non-owner occupants are counted is just one of more to come. Now they will not consider a second home like an investor owned property which will open more condos to owner-occupants. The gentleman from FHA said hold tight, more will be coming before the end of the year.
Do we have problems at NAR? Of course we do but thousands are stepping up to the plate to make a difference. Some of our problems NAR can't solve like raising the education levels to cut down on incompetent agents, this is still up to the states. The RPR changes with AMP and Upstream look good on paper but can NAR deliver? I say yes but the devil is in the details and the money. Troubles yes we have them but what I see is one of the most effective lobbies in D.C. despite Citizens United, a record fund raising year for RPAC with over $30 million contributed, new explorations in education, more member benefits, and an era of openness and transparency with first rate analysis like the D.A.N.G.E.R report that looked at not only problems from without, but also within. That's it so far but more to come. Hope to see many of you in Orlando next November.
Added Thought: I forgot that yesterday when we had the international parade of flags at the general session, when the French Representative cam out he recieved a five minute standing ovation of REALTOR® solidarity with a lot of tears flowing around the room and the tradtional two kiss greeting with bear hugs from NAR leadership. It was quite a moment and made all us proud.
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