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After a monumental year of change, the National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) is looking to the past to find inspiration for the future.
Kevin Sears took to the NAR NXT main stage at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center on Friday morning with a large iced coffee from Dunkin’ in hand. The NAR president and Massachusetts native then took NAR members on a walk down memory lane to explain the trade group’s priorities for 2025.
“In case you didn’t know, it’s been quite a year,” Sears said. “We’ve gone through some leadership changes, some legal challenges and one of, if not the largest, industry shifts of our lifetime. And while there may be many challenges in front of us, we have a lot of work still to do.”
While 2024 has certainly been full of challenges, Sears said it also presented the trade association and its members with plenty of opportunities to show leadership. But in order to successfully lead through these opportunities and best prioritize the trade group’s goals, Sears feels that members need to understand the history of organized real estate.
Real estate entities and professionals first organized in 1891 by forming the National Real Estate Association, which was created with the goal of making homeownership “simpler and safer for consumers,” Sears said.
“From day one, we sought to protect the consumer,” he added.
The entity that would eventually become NAR began in 1907, when a group of seven local boards of REALTORS® in the Midwest came together to discuss common issues. The following year, the group decided to invite the other 38 known local REALTOR® boards, forming what is now NAR.
“Our origins are steeped in two things: protecting the consumers and working together to protect those consumers, and I think it sounds like we stick true to who we are,” Sears said. “So, as I look to 2025 and where we want to go, it is to stick to the basics. Let’s protect the consumer; let’s work together.”