The National Association of Realtors has spent the past several years fighting controversy after controversy — including Department of Justice antitrust probes, the loss of a landmark buyer-broker commission lawsuit that upended the association’s cooperative compensation rule, and sexual misconduct allegations against former leaders. Although there are still a few choppy waves to navigate, NAR President Kevin Sears told the Inman Connect San Diego crowd that the Association is moving toward calmer seas.
Kevin Sears at ICSD.
“What a difference a year makes,” Sears said while recounting his “lions’ den” experience at Inman Connect Las Vegas last year. “The feeling was palpable, and for those of you who were in Las Vegas, I didn’t ask you to trust me. Instead, I said, ‘This is what we are planning to do.'”
“I sure hope that you have seen that we have fulfilled what we said we were going to do,” he added. “I’m here again to be held accountable, but I hope what we’ve been able to do, what we said a year ago we were going to do, has the ship going in the right direction.”
Session moderator Clelia Peters dove headfirst into the challenges still facing NAR, including declining membership numbers. Although NAR has been secretive in the past about recent membership trends, even going so far as to remove decades of membership data in April 2024, Sears was transparent with the crowd, revealing that the Association’s board budgeted for a 150,000-member drop in November. The president said they anticipate numbers to dip even lower, with NAR adjusting its budget to reflect 1.2 million members next year, equaling a $30 million deficit.
“For me, it’s about the real estate cycle we’re in when there’s less business, less units being sold,” he said. “Our members are having a harder time making a living and providing for their family, and so looking at the entire market in the industry, we budgeted for 1.2 million Realtor members next year.”
As a result of the deficit, Sears said NAR has had to make difficult decisions to deliver a balanced budget, including laying off 41 employees in April and freezing hiring efforts, leaving 20 open positions unfilled. Despite smaller coffers, Sears said NAR will not raise national dues in 2026 — an announcement that warmed up a steely ICSD crowd.
“For a second year in a row, we did not ask for a dues increase,” he said. “And very importantly, in February, we were able to pay the first $202 million that we needed to pay for the [buyer-broker commission] settlement, and with the budget as approved, we’ll be able to make the payment of $72 million next February for that settlement.”
“God bless our CEO Nykia Wright. Nykia Wright has come in to not only straighten the ship out, but to make sure that we set up the association and our members to be successful for the next 100 years,” he added. “She is treating our association like a business. And at times in the past, it wasn’t necessarily treated as a business.”
Sears said the budget cuts have forced NAR to become better in many ways, with Wright overhauling the association’s communications team; investing in providing deeper, more useful real-time market data to its members; and strengthening NAR’s advocacy arm, which helped protect 1031 exchanges and extend state and local tax (SALT) deductions for another five years through President Trump’s Big Beautiful Bill.
“What she’s saying is, ‘No, what we need to do is be the first voice in real estate and that’s what we’re looking at,'” he said, finally garnering a round of applause from the back of the auditorium. “It’s how do we take the world-class data we have, the excellent members that we have, and use that and be the first voice in real estate?”
“You know, go to any little league field there’s gonna be a Realtor coaching. Go to a PTO meeting, a Habitat build or a soup kitchen. There are Realtors who are the fabric of the community. So the elected officials get that. It translates all the way up to Washington, D.C., so that when we go in, we have a Realtor that’s designated to be the key contact for every member of Congress so that we can talk about the issues.”
“Listen, flood insurance. Is that a Republican issue, or is that a Democrat issue? It’s an American issue. And so when we’re meeting with our members of Congress, we’re not talking about red issues, we’re not talking about blue issues, we’re talking about red, white, and blue issues,” he said, getting another round of applause. “These are American issues, and that is how our advocacy is directed…. We are protecting the consumer, and I’m proud of that.”
As for NAR’s influence on multiple listing service (MLS) policies, Sears said he anticipates rules will continue to evolve along with the industry, as evidenced by the addition of a Multiple Listing Options for Sellers (MLOS) policy alongside Clear Cooperation, the latter of which requires brokers to add a listing to the MLS within 24 hours of publicly marketing it. MLOS includes Delayed Marketing Exempt Listings that allows sellers and their brokers to enter a listing into the MLS while delaying its syndication through an Internet Data Exchange (IDX) feed.
“It will evolve with the industry, with the business, with the association, based on what the consumers need and want. And I stand by that,” he said. “And if there’s an issue that pops up, we’ll look at it, we’ll study it, and we’ll figure out, ‘Is there something that needs to happen?'”
“But what we did in March with the consumer option for sellers, I don’t think anybody was completely happy with it, which is good,” he added, noting that market forces will drive the use of exemptions. “If nobody’s completely happy and everybody’s a little bit upset, then we probably that we probably did the right thing.”
Sears, who will leave his post in November, said NAR will continue to raise the bar for itself and its Realtor members.
“Last year, I was able to represent our 1.5 plus or minus million Realtor members in Washington, D.C., with the Department of Justice, not once but twice,” he said. “That’s something that I was very proud of. I’m very proud of because I was able to give them a voice and a face that they weren’t used to hearing they’re only used to communicating with with lawyers, and as being able to tell them across the table nicely that they have a complete misunderstanding of what we do on a daily basis, how we wake up unemployed every morning, and we choose to do this. We’re entrepreneurs.”
“I appreciate the opportunity to be here, to serve the members, to serve the industry. It’s been a complete honor to serve you all,” he added.
