At the National Association of REALTORS® Leadership Summit, the message was loud and clear: We’re getting back to business.
“[That] means helping the members navigate the issues that impact their day-to-day business, like financing, inventory, insurance, zoning restrictions, and barriers to home ownership and real property ownership,” 2026 NAR President-elect Kevin Brown said Monday at the annual gathering of local and state association executives and presidents-elect. “We can help members tackle these issues by running NAR with the ethos of a large enterprise company, one focused on efficiency, growth and success.”
After months of planning, budgeting and staff changes, stakeholders will soon see the “fruit of that labor,” CEO Nykia Wright said.
“I can't wait to begin to show the market all of the things that we've been putting into place,” Wright said. “It's going to be a tsunami effect of them seeing the results of all the work that we put together.”
Here are three takeaways from Wright and Brown’s address.
A 3-year Strategic Plan Is Coming
NAR’s new three-year strategic plan will be driven by what members have asked for. The process is in full swing but not complete because charting a data-driven plan that accounts for varied member priorities takes time, Wright said.
“The strategic plan … has to represent the ecosystem,” she said. “The players in the industry have to see themselves in one way or another. The sources that we are using to come up with the strategic plan are many.”
Broker and AE Engagement Remains a High Priority
Both Wright and Brown spoke about the concerted effort to bring those who have felt disenfranchised over the last decade or two back to the table.
The effort started with creating new roles and hiring top talent to reestablish those bonds. Jarrod Grasso is leading the charge with local and state associations; independent consultant Sherry Chris is reengaging brokerage leaders. Grasso, Wright and Chris have been traveling the country to bring stakeholders back into the fold.
“The conversations [with brokers] have been successful,” Wright said, explaining that the process of building trust isn’t one and done. “The purpose of the first meeting is to get a second meeting. The purpose of the second is to get a third. And pretty soon we will have that confidence back, but we have a lot of work to do.”
She appealed directly to the association executives in the room, asking, “What have we done to not manage our relationship effectively with you all over the past, and how do we go back and get that trust?”
Brown, an Oakland, Calif., broker, spoke of the need for NAR and associations to hold each other accountable.
“One of our core strengths is that NAR is a member-led association,” he said. “I need you to stay informed and engaged. We want to hear your ideas on how to tackle these issues facing the industry and hindering our members’ ability to get back to and execute their next transaction.”
Evolving the Business to Help Members Get to Their Next Deal
Over the last year, the organization has undergone a dramatic refocus on improving member experience and value, Wright said. A big part of the process was interviewing more than 75,000 members across the country.
The results: NAR has begun to roll out new members-only benefits, such as the metro market statistic dashboard to help members visualize specific housing and affordability data, RPR®’s Next Gen Reports, enabling members to create customized, branded reports quickly and easily. Members now also have an opportunity to submit questions to NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun and NAR Deputy Chief Economist Jessica Lautz. Yun and Lautz are answering questions via a new “Ask the Economist” video series on social media.
In addition, NAR recently hired a seasoned intellectual property lawyer, Leslie Nettleford-Freeman, to strengthen NAR’s trademark protection. The trademark distinguishes professionals who abide by NAR’s strict Code of Ethics from non-member real estate practitioners. NAR also announced the hiring of litigation expert, Andowah Newton, to fortify its risk management practices.
If NAR is marketing something as a benefit, Wright said, it must be a “true benefit.” If it’s not, the association needs to “sunset it and replace it with some type of enhancement where people continue to see the value of being a REALTOR®, a member of NAR.”
