Six months into the National Association of REALTORS®’ three-year strategic plan, viewed as its turnaround playbook, stakeholders have already clocked a difference.
Chris Carrillo, CEO of North Texas Real Estate Information Systems, the largest multiple listing service in the state, says he’s seeing an “earnest effort” to integrate input from MLSs into NAR activities.
“I’ve seen reengagement in a very genuine way that I think will have meaningful results,” Carrillo says. “... I’ve been very impressed with the leadership at NAR, specifically Nykia [Wright] and her team, and I trust what they're saying.”
On Wednesday, the association released an update on progress made toward fulfilling its 2026-2028 Strategic Plan commitments during the second quarter of 2026.
The update highlights new ways NAR is collaborating with MLSs, including:
- Establishing a framework to reduce legal risk.
- Launching a new MLS Execs Group to advise and engage with NAR leadership.
- Publishing several resources, well received by MLS executives, to help demystify NAR’s MLS policies.
Executives Praise MLS Resources
“My rules and my approach to something in Texas and Louisiana may be vastly different than Colorado or North Carolina, and our ecosystem allows those differences,” says Carrillo, who’s been leading MLSs for the last 20 years. “NAR does a really good job by not trying to jump in and take a side, but say, ‘Here’s the information you need to make your decision, an informed decision.’”
Nicole Jensen, CEO of realMLS in northeast Florida, agrees and says the resources have reaffirmed rules her company already has in place; for instance, realMLS began implementing Coming Soon statuses and other limited marketing options before NAR published guidance.
Still, she says, “it makes me confident in our decisions.”
For Matt Fowler, CEO of Doorify, an MLS in North Carolina, NAR’s resources have been another piece of “professionally produced” content the company can share with its network.
Sometimes Fowler has questions, a reflection of the challenge of creating resources that are specific enough to be useful while remaining broad enough to address the needs of roughly 500 unique MLSs.
“I have seven open questions from [the latest] documentpdf,” he says. “We’re appreciative of where we are today, as of the middle of July, and we’re engaged in how we can answer these questions together.”
Fowler is particularly appreciative of the way NAR improved communication. That helps him make local decisions, like Doorify’s decision to stop syndicating days on the market to portals and implement a new tool, the “momentum index,” to gauge interest.
“We now see in the guidelines that NAR has put out for us that we have the freedom to innovate within that scope [of cooperation],” Fowler says.
The reengagement is a welcome change for the execs with a combined 87 years in the MLS space.
"I think their approach actually strengthens MLSs because it allows us to make local decisions that matter while also still providing resources that allow you to be better educated, which should hopefully lead to better decisions," Carrillo says.
Moving the Needle With Advocacy, Original Research
NAR’s Q2 update also highlights advocacy gains notched, most notably getting the most significant federal housing legislation in nearly two decades passed into law. Through its nearly 50 measures, the bipartisan 21st Century ROAD to Housing Act increases housing supply, expands access to capital and homeownership and is the culmination of more than 21 months of tireless lobbying by NAR.
The progress doesn’t stop there.
The association helped the Congressional Real Estate Caucus reach a new milestone, surpassing 150 members in the second quarter, growing from just four members when it launched with the support of NAR in the previous Congress. NAR also commissioned and produced original research that quantifies the benefit of raising the cap on the tax exclusion for the sale of a primary residence.
Under current law, homeowners are taxed on a portion of the profit. Single filers can exclude up to $250,000, while married couples filing jointly can exclude up to $500,000. Those limits, set in 1997, have never been adjusted for inflation. The association is supporting solutions that will fix that. One bill, the More Homes on the Market Act, would double the exclusion on a primary home and index the limits to future inflation. NAR’s lobbying team says the change is about preserving the home equity of average Americans, much of whose wealth is wrapped up in their homes.
In its research, NAR found that roughly 13.1 million homeowners—15% of all owner-occupied households—could exceed today’s tax exclusion on a primary residence if they sold their property.
“It is enlightening to see the numbers,” Kimberly Bragman, chair of NAR’s Federal Taxation Committee, says. The committee recommends NAR’s policy positions, which guide its lobbyists and advocacy team, and monitors the progress of tax policy proposals on Capitol Hill.
NAR members from across the country shared this study directly with lawmakers on Capitol Hill during the 2026 REALTORS® Legislative Meetings in June, helping gain dozens of new co-sponsors for the More Homes on the Market Act. The study was also the focus of an advertising campaign in a popular Capitol Hill newsletter, Axios Hill Leaders. The campaign experienced more than double the publication’s normal engagement rate, showcasing an intense interest in the issue among lawmakers and their staff.
“We’ve always been focused on [home equity preservation], but I would say even more so now just seeing the scope of how many people it impacts,” says Bragman, who has served on the committee for five years.
NAR nurturing the expansion of the congressional caucus also benefits the committee’s goals.
“Real estate and its auxiliary businesses make up almost one-fifth of our economy, so having people that understand how important it is to the economy obviously benefits us—it helps us when we're writing policy,” Bragman says. “... We write policy. [That] doesn’t mean that it’s then going to become a law. We can just write the best policy that we can, get it to our lobbyists and hope that they can find somebody to carry the water.”
Bragman has seen the lock-in effect from the outdated tax exclusion in her market of San Antonio, Texas: Seniors are disincentivized to move, and first-time home buyers—hitting a record high at age 40—are sidelined by short supply.
It’s a familiar story for NAR members, like Cindy Baas in Arlington, Texas.
“Just yesterday, I sat across from a widow who recently lost her spouse,” Baas says. “She's now facing one of the hardest decisions of her life: stay in a home that's far too large for her or sell and hand over a substantial chunk of her equity to the government in capital gains taxes. That is not acceptable. That is not fair. ... If we simply update the capital gains exemption to reflect today's market, we'd free up quality housing, help aging homeowners move forward with dignity and give buyers real options.”
Notable Outcomes: Legal, Broker Engagement and More
NAR’s legal achievements were on full display during the second quarter. In April, NAR’s legal team took a proactive approach and opted in to a proposed settlement in the Tuccori home buyer class-action lawsuit. A judge preliminarily approved the settlement in May. If the settlement were to receive final approval after a hearing in November, the settlement would release millions of agents, brokers, companies, associations and MLSs from potential liability, and shield against potential home buyer copycat lawsuits.
What’s more, the association successfully fought to dismiss half a dozen lawsuits challenging NAR’s membership and MLS structure and accelerated its brand protection operations to educate and detect misuse of the REALTOR® trademarks.
In the last three months, the trade group has also boosted its broker engagement by:
- Hosting more than 350 broker-owners at its first Broker Policy Forum, during the REALTORS® Legislative Meetings in June.
- Launching new broker-specific tools like its Agent Retention Strategies framework.
- Launching the RPR Reports Widget.
- Participating in 17 in-person broker events nationwide.
On the technology front, NAR launched a new housing shortage tracker feature within its Metro Marker Statistics dashboard that includes construction activity. Reliable, actionable market insights help members make better informed decisions to serve their clients.
NAR wrapped its Q2 progress report by spotlighting its new, improved committee application process, which better matches members’ expertise to roles, and its new Learning Management System, which will modernize and scale its education platform.
In an email to members, NAR CEO Nykia Wright brought the progress full-circle, returning to the plan’s founding vision: “helping members get to their next transaction."
