Applications to serve on one of the National Association of REALTORS®’ committees open Wednesday, April 1, and for returning applicants, the process will look a little different.
This year NAR has changed the application process, prioritizing relevant experience. These changes will enhance the effectiveness and efficiency of governance and are in response to member calls for greater transparency surrounding NAR governance and committee appointments.
There are three major changes:
- First, all members seeking a committee appointment in 2027 must create a new expertise profile. That applies even to those who have served on committees before and completed a profile using the old form. Existing profiles can’t be reused or edited, and moving forward members applying for committees will be asked to review and update their profiles annually.
- Second, those submitting committee endorsements, essentially letters of recommendation supporting a member’s application, will be asked to place more emphasis on experience than on personal relationships. Endorsers will have access to each committee’s purpose and qualifications, enabling informed and meaningful recommendations.
- Third, and perhaps the most impactful, application questions are open-ended and tailored to specific areas of expertise. Additionally, vice chair applicants will have a new set of questions designed to highlight leadership experience and committee-specific expertise. Previously, all applicants regardless of position or committee focus area answered the same three questions.
Taken together, the changes reflect NAR’s commitment to stronger governance and more intentional leadership selection.
“We want to make sure that all voices are heard and that it doesn’t seem like a club-like environment, where only the people in the know are successful,” NAR CEO Nykia Wright said at NextHome’s conference earlier this month.
Related: What Do NAR Committee Chairs, Vice Chairs, Liaisons and Staff Executives Do?
What It’s Like to Serve on NAR Committees: Giving and Gaining
For Eric Sain, GRI, a luxury agent and district sales manager at The Keyes Company Luxury in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., volunteering on NAR’s Housing Needs Committee was about sharing information.
“My interest in joining committees was to learn as much about my industry and the profession as possible, and also to give back the knowledge that I had received since starting in the business,” Sain says.
After 19 years of serving on committees, including four stints as chair, he has learned a lot.
“It has helped me gain other perspectives,” Sain says. “I mean, what happens in Florida may not be the same thing that happens in North Carolina, California, Missouri [or] any other state.”
That’s what drove Nick Kremydas, C2EX, CEO of South Carolina REALTORS® to get involved.
“I joined the State and Local Issues Committee initially because that's the work that I did for the association. I wanted to know what topics—what issues were impacting REALTORS® in other states because those issues could end up in South Carolina,” he says. “And I wanted to know about them before they got here.”
The information sharing goes both ways, says Kremydas, who has dedicated more than two decades to NAR governance.
“South Carolina was one of the states that put insurance on NAR's roadmap specifically flood insurance and disaster insurance,” he says. “And by having a seat at the table, we were able to elevate that issue as a national issue as opposed to just a coastal state issue.”
When Brooke Hunt, SRS, a Keller Williams agent in Texas, first served on NAR’s Professional Standards Committee in 2001 she was following in her mom’s footsteps, the same way she became president of her local board.
“[I] started with professional standards because that was what my mother loved,” the second-generation agent says.
The more she served, the more knowledge about the industry she accumulated.
“The rooms that you’re in and the conversations you have—you start to learn how the Federal Taxation Committee has such an impact on what we can do,” Hunt says, giving an example of a conversation where committee members discussed the possibility of government incentives for institutional investors to sell properties and free up inventory for first-time home buyers.
“You don’t get that sitting in your office at home,” she says.
That’s why it's so important subject matter experts lean-in, Chris Beadling, AHWD, broker owner at Quinn and Wilson, REALTORS®, in Pennsylvania, says.
“And when you have a chair or vice chair who recognizes that it's important to align all of that knowledge with the goals of the association, then it's really great,” says Beadling, who began on the Member Communications Committee in 2013.
Combined, these four professionals have dedicated 78 years to building a better NAR by participating in committees. But they’ve served in more ways than one.
Over the years, all four have been tapped to help review the roughly 6,000 applications that pour in and appoint individuals to the 900 open committee positions. It’s a rigorous process involving long days and a mountain of data.
Here’s what they think you should know about NAR governance.
Kremydas: Having a voice starts with showing up.
“You can’t complain about the outcome when you don’t participate in the process,” Kremydas says. “It’s like complaining about somebody who wins an election when you don’t go out and vote, right? So, it’s important that members participate in their organization—whether it’s at the local, state or national level—there is a seat at the table for everyone.”
Hunt: Governance is a sacrifice.
“Governance has always been the most dedicated and hardworking group—and this goes all the way from top to bottom. It’s the Leadership Team. It’s the Executive Committee. It's the chairs and the vice chairs and all the committee members. Most of us pay our own way to go to two no-longer-inexpensive trips,” she says, referring to the two in-person meetings most committees have each year during the REALTORS® Legislative Meetings (ofter referred to as RLM) and NAR NXT. “The other consideration is we step away from our business for nearly a full week, twice a year, to do this work on behalf of members who prefer not to be involved directly.”
Beadling: We’re doing it to better the industry.
Committee members are “taking time away from their own productivity in the office. They're taking time away from their family. They're taking their time away from other community endeavors,” Beadling says agreeing, “and they're doing all that to better this industry, even up to and including writing their own check to get there.”
He says that’s what makes committee selection process so humbling.
“I'm always wowed by the number of people who are at the governance meetings, whether that's RLM or NAR NXT, that I know full well could just as easily be home working with their clients and their customers, helping feed their families,” he says, “but they chose to put all that aside and come work with NAR to make what we do better.”
Sain: Governance is evolving.
“I think sometimes we can get bogged down into thinking it's just the same way that it has been,” Sain says. “We're just a large organization, and sometimes it can take time to change. [But] recently, we've been thrown into rapid change. So, I think a lot more people are seeing that bigger changes can happen in a shorter amount of time if we're all [of] the same mindset. I think that NAR governance is evolving with the changes in our industry.”
Tips for Committee Applicants
Beadling says those who are applying for committees should seek endorsements from those who truly know their skills.
“When you're on the committee selection side, you're not reading whether that endorsement came from the president of your state versus your local AE,” Beadling says. “You're really trying to find people who says that you're good at what you do.”
Sain has a message for those who don’t get selected for a committee: Don’t get discouraged.
“Apply next year, visit the committee meeting if it [is] an open committee,” he says, adding that committees are conscious of up-and-comers and can help identify candidates for the future.
