NAR’s strategic plan focuses on accountability and member value

“One project is to better equip real estate agents with actionable residential and commercial information,” NAR CEO Nykia Wright said during a news conference Sunday. “We do that, but we do it in a different way. The more RPR (Realtors Property Resource) AI brings online, we equip them with that. The more Lawrence Yun starts doing more predictive analytics at the local level, we add that online.”

According to the trade group, by implementing the three-year Strategic Plan, NAR will modernize the association, improve transparency and deliver greater value to members and empower them to hold the association accountable. This responsibility will be reflected in a new annual report that NAR will publish, detailing the work it has done to implement the strategic plan, and in quarterly reports issued during Executive Committee meetings discussing the progress of various projects.

NAR said it is currently unsure whether it will provide members with a quarterly report, saying it will depend on its ability to present the information in a clear and digestible way for members. However, Wright noted that she will be at broker summits and NAR representatives will be on stage at state and local meetings across the country to talk to members about the projects and initiatives throughout the year.

“We build the airplane as we fly it,” Wright said.

And while not all of the projects in the plan are brand new, what is new, Wright said, is the responsibility NAR is taking on.

“Even for the projects and initiatives that are going forward, there is more accountability,” Wright said.

The Strategic Plan is the result of a massive industry outreach effort, with NAR saying it heard from more than 150,000 voices at every level of the association and industry.

“We’ve been socializing the plan across the country, across the thirteen regions, and a lot of people have been participating in that feedback,” Wright said. “The brokers meeting we had on October 13 and 14 was very important because those CEOs represented about 700,000+ of our members, so you can start to see how many stakeholder opinions were part of formulating the plan.”

The most valuable projects for members

Based on the feedback NAR received, it created a plan and identified 24 initiatives that its members believed would be most valuable to their membership experience. In examining these initiatives, the strategic planning committee created its 75 projects, but Wright says not all of these projects are created equally, with the trade group creating budgets in just a few weeks to implement some projects and several months to implement others.

“An example of something with a longer tail is zero-based budgeting,” says Wright. “You can’t transform a budget in three or four months, that’s going to require significant industry-wide moves because you also have to coordinate with your state and locals on the contribution dollars coming in. That’s been a frustration across the ecosystem when it comes to transparency, so our commitment to that is a very long project.”

Improvements to real-time market insights

Within these 75 projects, NAR has identified six signature projects as part of the plan. These strategic projects include improving the real-time market insights it provides members, creating a legal leadership forum to advance legal thought leadership, reviewing all board committees to clarify roles, minimize overlap and reduce redundancy, transforming the budgeting process and establishing consistency budget guardrails, developing resources to align those national, state and local associations and increasing Realtor’s brand value.

New obligations

In addition to these initiatives and signature projects, NAR is also making a series of commitments to members, partners, consumers and the industry as a whole.

For members, the idea is to help brokers thrive in their daily activities and build a proactive organization. To deliver on this promise, NAR said it plans to improve the tools, training and support it provides to its members, and will develop financial and operational systems and structures to provide rapid support to members.

For its partners, it is committed to driving collaborative solutions by doing things like co-creating programs and sharing resources, and fostering deeper partnerships based on transparency and shared goals.

When it comes to the industry, NAR is committed to protecting and advancing the legal interests of brokers by proactively shaping “legal protections that represent broker priorities and promoting a resulting industry,” and recommitting to professionalism by strengthening ethical standards and elevating current and emerging association leaders.

Finally, through the plan, NAR commits to championing real estate ownership for all through its advocacy work and cultivating trust in the Realtor brand, positioning it as a trusted symbol of expertise, integrity and reliable service.

As NAR looks to the future, the trade group said there are “big boulders” they need to move to turn the association around. Three of the biggest bottlenecks, according to NAR, are the growth of its products and services, as well as its education portfolio, efficiency gains, especially those related to financial transformation, and legal risk management.

“We are in a race to continue to prove our worth,” Wright said. “Let’s think about what each association in any industry is responsible for, and we meet those qualifications. We are here to serve and support the members.”