Nykia Wright says NAR is a ‘base camp’ for re...

During an appearance at Inman Connect New York, NAR CEO called for keeping the organization at the center of the industry while not competing with brokerages and members

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NAR CEO Nykia Wright vowed on Wednesday that the 1.47-million member organization would stay in its lane and not compete with brokerages — while highlighting ways she said the brand is working to rebuild trust in a new era.

While speaking on stage at Inman Connect New York on Wednesday, Wright repeatedly referred to NAR as the “base camp” for the real estate industry that is brokerage agnostic and provides myriad benefits to dues-paying members.

The comments came against a backdrop of years of criticism from members who had grown frustrated by various rules, policies and other structures put in place by the organization.

At its core, Wright said, NAR would not compete with its own members.

“We have to really understand where that water’s edge is and stay in that water,” Wright said.

“If I’m reading the publicly traded statements, annual reports of publicly traded [real estate] companies, and I see that they are entering the title and the mortgage business, I would argue that… none of our local associations should be entering that business,” Wright said.

That happened under past leadership, Wright acknowledged, but she and her freshly appointed leadership team have agreed it should not happen in the future.

“That is not what we are designed to do,” she added. “We are not designed to compete against our members. We are here to support our members, and that lane has to be clear.”

NAR’s role in a ‘Bloomberg Terminal’ of real estate

Among the existing and emerging benefits of NAR membership are tools that have been created by NAR’s Real Property Resource (RPR), Wright said.

As for calls for the industry to move toward a centralized source of MLS data — something that has been compared to the Bloomberg Terminal that is widely used by traders — Wright suggested that NAR could remain at the center of such a database.

“If there’s a Bloomberg Terminal version of an MLS, well, quite frankly, Realtors’ product, RPR, is at the forefront of being in a position to do that,” Wright said.

The comment came one day after Compass CEO Robert Reffkin floated the idea of a national MLS co-owned equally by real estate brokerages whose agents rely on it. Also Tuesday, CanopyMLS CEO Anne Marie DeCatsye suggested a more appropriate number of MLSs could be closer to 25, down from over 500 today.

With about 500,000 members using RPR, Wright said NAR was positioned to play a role in the future of data-sharing and presentation.

“Tons of companies use that as input into their data infrastructure to ensure that there is integrity in the transaction, to ensure that there is integrity in how they are using artificial intelligence, to ensure that there is somewhat of a CRM tool, and that people are actually singing from the same hymnal,” she said. “I know that people have frustrations with data presented this way on one platform, data presented that way on another. Well, we do have that uniform piece, but that is something that Realtors has invested in.”

The 3-way agreement

At its annual event in Houston last November, NAR repeated its call to support the three-way membership agreement at the state, local and national Realtor levels.

Wright continued her pledge for support of the setup, saying that it allowed Realtors to maintain a powerful network of widespread advocacy around real estate.

“When people say, ‘Why is this on the president’s agenda?'” Wright said of the ongoing housing attainability crisis. “It’s because we set the table for it to be on the agenda.”

“And to be clear, when I say we, it’s the collective we, because this is your dues dollars,” she added.

She said that major media networks rely on and cite NAR data routinely to spotlight issues that are related to the industry.

Wright also said member dues dollars are spent equally on supporting candidates that are “pro-Realtor, pro-agent, pro-homeownership, pro-consumer.”

“Housing did not just come into the affordability conversation by happenstance,” she said. “It was intentional.”

Changes at NAR

Wright went on in her remarks to liken NAR to Walmart, which on Tuesday became one of a few companies valued at over $1 trillion. The retailer has 1.6 million employees in the United States. At the end of last year, Wright said, NAR had 1.47 million members.

The three-year strategic plan and annual report were attempts at uniting an industry that was divided.

“What that did was simply getting an industry that was going in many, many different directions and that did not have a lot of confidence in NAR at the basic level that got everyone on the same page,” she said.

The room broke into laughter after Wright spent three uninterrupted minutes swiftly covering the work NAR did last year in its bid to regain confidence and support from its membership, with the crowd seeming to acknowledge that the organization has been busy.

Wright also acknowledged that she has replaced 80 percent of executive leadership at the organization since becoming full-time CEO.

She said those new leaders needed some time to come into their own.

“Some executives were still just getting their sea legs,” she said. “Now that they have them, I believe that we are ready to run.”

“There was an absence of leadership,” Wright said, “and I think people around the country felt that in different ways.”

Email Taylor Anderson

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