Hey, lady! Yeah, YOU!
I'm Calling Out for Female Leaders to Bring Their Voices to the Table
In an industry where women make up 62 percent of all REALTORS, why is public discourse dominated by men?
Look at who the loudest voices are. Rob Hahn runs a strategy consulting firm. James Dwiggins is CEO of NextHome. Mauricio Umansky owns The Agency and gained fame through reality TV. Robert Reffkin leads Compass.
The people speaking up are either consultants outside the traditional system, CEOs of their own companies, or celebrity brokers with independent platforms. But what they definitely all are is men.
All men.
Even though we've come a long way, there's still a lot of "settle down, Karen" energy when women speak up. Old habits die hard in an industry whose systems have largely been dominated by male voices.
When I see responses to industry posts, I notice the gendered difference in how criticism is received. It's going to take more effort and more warriors.
The Club Rules
I learned there's a club in real estate. And the first rule of the club is you don't question NAR.
The lesson came when I raised concerns about the Clear Cooperation Policy. I saw data problems with MLS systems. I watched Zillow build a massive business by misleading buyers about which agents were actually listing properties.
So I ran for the local Board of Realtors to make my voice heard.
Bureaucrats always say you should try to effect change from inside the system. I call bullsh*t.
I spoke up multiple times about the concerns that brought me and the people who voted for me to the table. I was told this was the wrong place for the conversation. When I brought my concerns to the national stage at Inman, I got a cease and desist from my board.
The intimidation didn't stop there. The former association president tried to troll me on social media even after I resigned from the board.
The Chilling Effect
The obvious result is that only a few agents publicly discuss industry issues now. Most independent agents stay quiet about their concerns and frustrations.
They're scared. And if I'm any example, they have a right to be.
What about the regular practicing agent who doesn't own their brokerage or have a TV show? You rarely hear them voicing concerns publicly.
The industry's resistance to dissent has become systematic. NAR sent cease and desist letters to Phoenix Realtors over their MLS Choice option. Lawsuits challenging the Clear Cooperation Policy sprang up almost immediately after it took effect.
What Real Listening Looks Like
Many agents follow NAR no matter what. They don't question the choices that hurt agents, the lawsuits that resulted from members following their policies, or the mismanagement of dues.
But I'm curious if NAR leadership ever actually listens to dues-paying members. I had a call with NAR regarding what I considered to be a lackluster solution to the private listings issue. Even the new VP of Industry Relations took a back seat in the call, allowing the MLS chair to explain why MLSs have so much power and fear NAR has of antitrust litigation. Did my points make it through? I don’t think so.
Real listening would mean acknowledging legitimate concerns without legal threats. It would mean creating space for dissent instead of crushing it. It would mean recognizing that independent agents have valuable perspectives worth hearing. No condescension required, thank you.
I still have concerns. Big concerns.
MLS Data is inaccurate, more now than ever. Off-market sales are input with unregulated infrequency, and agents looking to reduce their “time on market” data move sales from active to pending just to avoid the day count continuing to scale if they play by the actual rules (entering a listing as active-contingent if the contract still has contingencies).
There should be different rules for portal/brokerage hybrids. Have we not learned our lesson from the past 10 years? If a brokerage is also a search portal, they should have to play by more stringent rules. Only in the past few years have they been required to include the listing agent and brokerage in the search portals. Better late than never, but even that was a fight that our MLS didn’t want to have—years ago when I brought this up, they were concerned that buyers would go to the listing agent directly. I found that argument to be weak considering there is a sign in the yard with the listing agent’s name on it already and it’s the buyer agent’s job to make sure their client knows the rules of contact. But even now, how is it that the agents providing the content for their business don’t get any of the IDX fees paid to the MLS? We pay for the images and the videos, we upload them to our MLS (which we pay for) and yet our MLS makes the IDX fees when Zillow wants to use our images? Make it make sense. And why, in this era of branding, can I still not add a public open house to my marketing remarks, or have any of my brand on my listings? My brand is the reason my sellers chose to list with me…and yet my MLS is more concerned with IDX dollars being diminished by a branded video or photo appearing on another brokerage’s search platform. If we truly are in an era of transparency, stop pretending there is no brand associated with every listing on the internet and let us do our thing!
Make the rules apply equally to all sizes. Yes, NAR Clear Cooperation has provided a loophole for large brokerages that allows “office exclusive” to mean “statewide brokerage exclusive,” and if you don’t have an affiliation with a large corporate brokerage, even if you have a large following on social media, you are not allowed to market your pocket listing broadly. Either everyone should have to put their off-markets in the MLS and play by the new rules (delayed entry), or none should, and we can all just freely market our pocket listings. Same rules, size of brokerage shouldn’t matter.
I'm not giving up the fight for equality between small and large brokerages, equal application of rules, agent advocacy, and data accuracy concerns.
The silence isn't sustainable. We have to do better as a real estate community about discussing difficult topics and being honest and vulnerable so we can make changes that improve our ability to serve our clients with maximum impact.