There’s always something to howl about.

Darwin and the Notorious NAR

One of the most powerful outcomes of attending an REBarcamp isn’t necessarily attending the many great discussions during the day, but the great conversations and discussions which take place over a beer after the meeting is over.  I also believe that REBC – now after experiencing yesterday’s REBCCHI – is the real personification of a virtual tool – a living and breathing example of how Twitter converts 140 characters into 140+ face to face meetings and discussions.  Followers carry more weight when they transform from the virtual world to the real world.

For me, the most meaningful discussion took place at the end of the day.  Todd Carpenter, NAR’s Social Media Guru, invited the CEO of NAR, Dale Stinton, to share his thoughts and address questions posed by the group.  His initial stance was somewhat defensive, however, during his discussion I gained a somewhat different perspective regarding the challenges that NAR is seeking to address and overcome.

NAR’s largest challenges is to address the needs and the ranks of the young professional.   Attempts by NAR to try to level the playing field may be difficult because of entitlement issues with older members.  Of the 1,500 boards throughout the country, 200 or so wield the most power.  Many of the larger, more influential boards may not embrace attempts to level the playing field for younger, more independent brokers.  Hence, Dale encouraged everyone to get involved in the boards to influence change.

I think NAR is evolving.

Come the end of 2009, NAR is rolling out two intiatives that have been more than a few years in development:

  1. RPR – Real Property Repository – to all NAR members, a database consisting of the property attributes including tax records etc. for 70 million properties in the US, allowing members to provide comments and additional information to the unique property description.
  2. A consumer focused website, equivalent to Realtor.org.  It is NAR’s response to providing everything a consumer needs to know about real estate.  Again, consumer focused versus member focused.

Timeline again for both is slated for fourth quarter, 2009.

Okay – so now RPR appears to be an almost national MLS, provides data like aggregators and looks like a potential leverage play against Realtor.com.

But why all the fuss about a consumer-faced website?

Well, here was the greatest value of the day for me – a discussion at the bar with @Ericstegemann and the notorious @robhahn taking a step back and taking a look at the big picture.   During Dale’s discussion with the group, he mentioned that the REALTOR brand is a Fortune 50 brand worth $4B.  But in the big picture, is $4B really impressive considering the size of its membership population of roughly 1.15M?

Do consumers really value the REALTOR brand?   Do REALTORs really value the REALTOR brand?

Apparently not.  Dale chastised the group for not actively participating and supporting in NAR’s Call for Action.  In fact of the 1.15M members, only 7% to 8% actually make the calls to their Congressmen.  From Dale’s perspective, NAR is only a 100,000 members strong, not 1.15M.

During the beer infused debate with Rob and Eric, the value of the REALTOR brand is essentially providing bully pulpit status to the average REALTOR, nothing more.

Maybe the biggest issue facing NAR isn’t the growth of the young professional, but the future value of the organization itself.  How does NAR increase the value of the REALTOR brand?

This may be the impetus to reaching out to the Consumer directly.  By providing a consumer focused website of all things real estate, NAR reaches potentially 70 million homeowners.  If the site reaches even 5% of the its intended audience, NAR’s voice reachs 3.5 million people, roughly three times the number of NAR members.

What if 7% of NAR members and 7% of the 3.5 million consumers reach out to Congress?  The message is 3.5 fold louder.  This begs the question.  In the future, how important will the licensed agent be to NAR?

NAR is evolving to survive.

  • Building a repository that could possibly compete with a powerful board’s MLS .  Could this be a path to leveling the playing field for independents by usurping the power of entitled boards?
  • Playing catch-up to technology rivals with a plethora of data – if you can’t beat ’em, change the market dynamics.
  • A direct link to the consumer – does this change the mission of NAR to be consumer focused or allow NAR to influence consumers to bring its entitled dinosaurs into the 21st century?

Are these strategies the missing link?