ShareSpeaking at the August Leadership Summit, Bill Brown, the 2017 president of the National Association of REALTORS®, announced four key goals that will be the focus of the next year, and urged local and state associations to get onboard with these goals.
“National priorities and initiatives are successful only when they are supported by state and local associations,” Brown told the association executives and 2017 local- and state-elected leaders at the summit. “We are all serving the same members.”
Brown also noted the variety of existing and new resources NAR will offer at the state and local levels to support these priorities and initiatives.
The first of Brown’s goals is to raise the homeownership rate, which has fallen in recent years to 63 percent. “If we can improve the homeownership rate . . . we can open the door to the American dream for more people [and] strengthen communities, and it will create more opportunities for our members,” he said.
In a time when younger generations increasingly question why home ownership is better than renting, NAR will develop new ways to answer that question. NAR announced plans to team up with researchers at the Fisher Center for Real Estate & Urban Economics at University of California Berkeley’s Haas School of Business to discover whether additional academic research might aid legislators and policy makers to encourage home ownership.
Brown’s second and third goals call for a doubling of efforts to preserve home owners’ mortgage interest and property tax deductions, 1031 tax-deferred exchanges, and the government’s support of the GSEs and FHA-insured loans.
“There’s a good chance elimination of both residential and commercial provisions will be on the congressional agenda next year,” Brown said.
Last, Brown said he will focus on REALTORS®’ financial future.
“Too many of our members have a decent career, but when they want to retire they don’t have the means to do so,” he said. “I want to see all of our members become financially solvent and independent.”
To this end, NAR will launch a new course, “Real Estate Investing: Build Wealth Representing Investors and Becoming One Yourself.”
Look for more resources to support these goals in the coming months.