The National Association of REALTORS® released its first progress update three months into implementation of its three-year Strategic Plan—what CEO Nykia Wright has described as the roadmap to the biggest real estate turnaround in history.
Wright, who has championed greater transparency and accountability at NAR, pledged to keep members informed about how the association is performing against its strategic commitments.
The plan is based on input from more than 150,000 members and everything in it revolves around two pillars: building the future member experience and modernizing the association.
Within those two pillars, NAR is reporting progress on two-thirds of its projects in Q1—with an emphasis on seven key areas including its advocacy work, committee application process, and the first steps in refreshing the association’s education offerings.
Fighting for Nationwide Affordable Housing Supply
NAR has been strongly supporting the bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act, one of the most significant pieces of housing legislation since the 2008 financial crisis.
With bipartisan support, the House and the Senate passed similar versions of the bill in February and March, respectively. Findings from a consumer poll, commissioned by NAR and shared with members of Congress, helped advance the Senate version.
The association's volunteer Congressional liaisons, known as Federal Political Coordinators, played a key role in communicating with members of Congress to drive support for the bill in both houses.
“We had 409 FPCs engage within hours of this call for action with a 96% response rate. Note, that's not 100% because there are vacancies in Congress, not because there are vacancies with the FPC program,” NAR Executive Vice President and Chief Advocacy Officer Shannon McGahn said on the “Advocacy Scoop” Podcast. “That level of mobilization really gets Congress' attention, and we were able to move that through quickly.”
Because the bills differ, the two chambers will need to negotiate to pass a final version.
Protecting and Differentiating the REALTOR® Brand as the Gold Standard
NAR worked to protect and differentiate the REALTOR® brand.
The new national advertising campaign flipped the script on the idea that REALTORS® “just open doors.” It pulled back the curtain revealing the backend hustle and juggling those in the business know all too well about.
The campaign this year eliminates costly legacy media buys and instead uses AI data to target first-time buyers online at the time they are looking to hire an agent.
Ad buys on streaming services, audio platforms and social media include Netflix, Hulu, Disney+, Spotify, Instagram, TikTok and more.
Apart from the campaign, a new brand protection team formed to detect and prevent misuse of the NAR member marks.
Strengthening Relationships With the Brokerage Community
In its ongoing efforts to engage brokers, NAR created more opportunities for the association to connect with brokers of all sizes.
It scheduled more than 35 live events across 21 states, with more than 14 broker summits and conferences successfully completed in partnership with REALTOR® organizations.
Additionally, NAR had more than 7,000 in-person and virtual touchpoints—which includes interactions with members, industry partners and stakeholders—with enterprise, mid-size and independent firms.
NAR also launched a range of useful broker resources, including monthly sales meeting playbooks, an enhanced Metro Market Statistics Dashboard and an AI policy template so that brokers have a starting point to create standards for the use of AI by their agents and staff.
More Notable Progress
NAR’s Q1 update also spotlighted progress against four other strategic objectives:
- Education: NAR completed planning for a three-year education road map, guided by member feedback. It also deepened partnerships with affiliated institutes, societies and councils for the future co-creation of educational materials, and it identified a new learning management system as a base to host courses. Through that base, NAR says, partners will get their content in front of more people, members will have one place to go for all their training, and NAR will create new non-dues revenue while offering more value than any one partner could provide alone.
- Realtor.com®: NAR has strengthened its corporate partnership with Realtor.com® to amplify NAR’s advocacy messaging and integrate Realtors Property Resource® in Realtor.com®’s new MLS product, “Realtor.com®+.”
- NAR reopened lines of communication with MLSs by reinstituting an advisory group of MLS CEOs and launching two resources on “coming soon” listings.
- Focus groups and surveys, completed in 2025, drove a massive reset in the way committees are appointed. The new process prioritizes experience tied to the committee’s work. At the same time, the association sunset five groups and announced it would retire three more on Dec. 1.
