I have been asked for a recap of the events at NAR Midyear, but as I did not attend the Board of Directors meeting, and as I was busy doing other things, I felt it wasn’t really my place to give a recap.
It is, however, my place to offer some thoughts — high-level, unusual, and either prophetic or batshit crazy depending on your point of view — on what I heard, saw, felt, and read this past week. And my overall impression right now is that war within the real estate industry is inevitable. It is a question of when, not if, and how, not why.
The “why” has already been answered by the Greek historian Thucydides, who wrote:
The growth of the power of Athens, and the alarm which this inspired in Lacedaemon, made war inevitable.
Similarly, the growth of the power of the Internet, and the alarm which this inspires in various circles in real estate, makes war inevitable. While I hope to see the minimum of conflict, and will work to make peace wherever I can, at this moment, I remain darkly fearful that we will need to fight in order to resolve the only question that matters: who shall rule?
Let’s just say that Internet access where I am is shaky, at best. So I’ll try to keep this as brief as possible.
A couple of interesting things happened today at the MLS Policy Committee Meeting. I’m sure the full report will be available after Midyear, but these are my initial brief thoughts.
Note the introduction of Ralph Martire as the “head of a Chicago-based bipartisan economic think tank”.
Since I’m more than a little interested in fiscal issues and real estate, I read the interview with Mr. Martire. And was left wondering how in heaven’s name he got into the pages of the official publication of the National Association of REALTORS, whose core campaign these days is on defending private property rights, homeownership, and the American Dream.
I’m sure that if you’re a reader of this blog, you’ve seen the “I am a REALTOR and I live by the Code” meme that’s everywhere on Facebook. The man who began the whole thing is Brian Copeland, an extraordinary young leader, REALTOR (obviously), and a fantastic karaoke master.
I was originally going to write a whole blog on the subject, but then thought, wouldn’t it be more fun to do this as a real conversation? And Brian was good enough to join me on a call where we discuss the campaign, the Code of Ethics, and he and I argue on whether to push things further or not.
So… here it is. I know the audio quality could be better, the editing could be better, and all of that, but… it’s a 30 minute conversation instead of a 10,000 word post.
Many thanks to Brian for joining me on the call, and let me know what you think, both of the subject of our discussion, as well as the whole “I’d rather read you instead, Rob, cuz your voice sucks” angle as well.
But frankly, I don’t want to. I hate Brightcove, and most WordPress users do as well. It’s even worse than Vimeo. Plus, to embed the YouTube video above, all I had to do was copy and paste the URL on its own line, and WordPress took care of the rest. Small suggestion for the good people at NAR: put everything on YouTube. It gets shared more. You can have comments. It’s pretty damn nice.
What’s even more interesting is that NAR has an official YouTube channel. This video is not on it. But this one is:
NAR has a Facebook Page. This video isn’t on it, but screenshots are. Um, maybe because the thing is in Brightcove? And on said Facebook Page, I notice that the screenshot posts have between 52 and 67 Likes. That’s not bad, considering there are only about a million REALTORS. I mean, if NAR were a big group with lots of members, getting 60 Likes for something like this might be a problem.
Three things here.
First, it is mind-boggling that only one person on YouTube uploaded that video. There are a million dues-paying members of NAR. There are 50 State Associations. Every single one of them has at least a Government Affairs Director. And large committees of deeply involved REALTORS who donate thousands of dollars and go to rallies and such. Any many, many, many of these people use video every single day. Quite a few are experts on YouTube. In fact, you can find dozens upon hundreds of webinars and tips and tricks and advice columns for REALTORS on how to use video.
For that matter, even if you can’t be bothered to upload the video, or don’t know how… 50 views? Really? Not a single comment? 67 Likes on the official NAR Page?
C’mon, man!
Second, we’ve heard for the past several years — and we still hear it now — that blogging is teh shiznitz for lead generation. We have gurus in this business who make a living telling REALTORS that Content is King, and produce tips on how to “generate content”. There are courses being taught by Associations on “Using Facebook for Business” and such. So, what’s up? Where the blogposts at? Where are the thousands of Facebook status updates sharing this video far and wide to all your clients? A slick professionally produced video that tells your clients that you and your Association are looking out for them isn’t content?
C’mon, man!
Third, this episode is precisely why I think the current top-down model of politics cannot work for NAR. At the end of that video, the nice man’s voice intones that “National Association of REALTORS supports maintaining homeowners tax incentives”. Well, when only 60 of the 112,000 people who LIKED your Facebook page liked that, and further noting that only 1/10th of your total membership even LIKED your page itself, I got news for ya. The National Association part might support maintaining tax incentives, but you’re gonna have to do some work to convince me that the REALTORS part does too. And when 999,940 members of the National Association of REALTORS couldn’t care less about the Dreams campaign, why should homeowners give a damn?
C’mon, man!
You know, when the mortgage interest deduction goes away, when 30% down payments become the norm, when the FHA becomes a strictly-for-Section-8-renters thing, and REALTORS I know are gnashing their teeth and angry at those fools in Washington DC, I’m gonna point to this episode and say,
I recently had the privilege of attending an event in Southern California with the Pacific West Association of REALTORS(r) at which a California state legislator spoke on issues facing the state. There were some really interesting Q&A with the brokers in attendance, ranging from property tax issues to whether brokers would be paying payroll taxes and worker’s comp for their agents.
But in light of two things I’ve read earlier today, I’m really starting to wonder if the idea of “real estate issues” is too narrow. Perhaps what NAR, state and local Associations, and all those interested in housing-related politics need to do is a hard rethink on just what constitutes political issues relevant to REALTORS.
Image may be copyright: Georgia Tech and/or Angela Valenti
In part 1, I began to tackle the REThink Future program that is currently underway. I have posted Nicole-Anne Boyer’s gracious response to that post here. And now, we dive into the Scenarios themselves… because… well, because it’s fun for me.
Let me reiterate my agreement with the idea that if the purpose of these scenarios is simply to stimulate thought, then no critique of them is valid. It wouldn’t matter if the scenario began with “A dimensional portal opens up in the sky through which the Norse god Loki leads a horde of alien invaders into Manhattan – what is the effect on the midtown condo market?”
Nonetheless, I think there are solid ways to improve the REThink Future program by thinking about the Scenarios once again. So we will delve into each one in turn to examine how such a thing might be done to make each scenario more plausible, more impactful, and ultimately, more useful to the attendees and to NAR.
I haven’t forgotten about the massive series on REThink Future I’m working on. Hell, at this rate, I should look for a publisher as it’s trending north of 15K words in multiple parts. In any event, Nicole-Anne Boyer, the Managing Director of Adaptive Edge — the company working with NAR on REThink Future — was kind enough to respond to various points in my first post about REThink. With her permission, I reproduce the relevant parts after the jump.
I really appreciate Nicole-Anne taking the time to continue the dialogue, because this is an important discussion for the industry to have. Continue reading →
At Inman Connect this year, I was fortunate enough to be invited to participate in REThink Future, an initiative of NAR that attempts to open up the strategic planning process to the membership and to some non-members (like me). Given that I do strategic planning for a living, and given that I have a few thoughts about the challenges facing the real estate industry, I went into the exercise excited.
And came out with, you guessed it, a few thoughts on how to change the process. I’m a Change Agent, baby! (The previous sentence should be read in a wry self-mocking tone, with a forehead smack and a slight shaking of the head.)
What NAR is trying to do is admirable: getting the rank and file membership, as well as local leadership, truly engaged in the NAR Strategic Plan (a copy of which may be found here). Traditionally, said Strategic Plan was crafted by the NAR Strategic Planning Committee (members can be found here) and handed down from on high to “members” who never read it, never engaged with it, and frankly couldn’t care less.
And this isn’t unusual for any large organization. Ford doesn’t necessarily include large number of its factory workers in its Strategic Planning either. What is unusual is for that organization to then actively seek out opinions and views from the rank and file and from outsiders. What is unusual is for that organization to invest significant time and money (NAR hired CEHolmes Consulting [CORRECTION: The company retained by NAR is Adaptive Edge, not CEHolmes Consulting. Notorious regrets the error. This post has been updated/edited.] a professional discussion facilitation company, to lead REThink Future) to do this, with an eye towards modifying their existing plan.
So first, NAR should be applauded for the effort, and encouraged to continue even with changes.
It is, however, speaking truth to a friend to let him know that his current path will not get him where he wants to go. Since I stay in this quirky little industry because I genuinely love so many of the people in it, I shall indulge myself — it’s my blog, after all — in offering up some free advice. Which is likely worth exactly what NAR paid for it.
You are free to skip this entire series if you don’t much care about NAR, Associations, and the like.
First, watch the video above. It’s my doppelganger Lawrence Yun, Chief Economist at NAR, explaining the 1.4% drop in June pending home sales. This comes on the heels of bad news about June released several days ago:
And predictably, the media and various pundits are all over these three bad news bears.
I’m more interested, however, in one small fact that Lawrence brings out in the video above:
Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, said inventory shortages are a factor. “Buyer interest remains strong but fewer home listings mean fewer contract signing opportunities,” Yun said. “We’ve been seeing a steady decline in the level of housing inventory, which is most pronounced in the lower price ranges popular with first-time buyers and investors.” (Emphasis mine.)
He later says, “Buyer interest remains exceptionally strong,” and says there’s pent-up demand with all the renters out there today. He blames low inventory levels due to banks holding back REO’s from the market.
Can we delve a bit into this “strong buyer interest” piece?
