The current housing crisis has forced many REALTORS® to seek employment other than their given profession.

The National Association of REALTORS® (NAR) reports continued losses in Membership for 12 straight months. Since peeking in October 2006 at 1,370,758 Members the organization has seen a steady loss in Membership to the figure of 1,257,491 in July of 2008. This represents 113,267 REALTORS® leaving the industry or better than 8%. While this is significant the losses for the last 12 months shows a considerably more rapid exit by real estate agents and practitioners.

One would expect that in an industry as hard hit as real estate has been since the so called “Real Estate Bubble” burst would experience an exodus but at this pace? Can part of the problem be the guardian of the industry? Could it be that NAR itself has aided in many cutting many careers short? Possibly but let me explain my reasons why I think NARS actions and inactions helped to aggravate an already serious problem.

To begin with NAR has set themselves up as the “Gate Keeper” to all that is real estate. Our government recognizes NAR as an authority. Our court system even holds non-NAR members to the same code of ethics sighting our code of ethics as “accepted and acceptable business practices”. With all that said why didn’t NAR make a stronger case on Capital Hill against sub prime lending? We certainly have the lobbyist and are reminded of the same in almost every Local Board meeting nationwide weekly. NAR could have made a major impact that would have helped to reduce the damage suffered by our industry. The answer is simple. During the recent real estate boom NAR Membership (and income from dues) skyrocketed from 763,585 in January of 2001 to 1,370,758 in October 2006. That is an amazing 44.3% increase. That is why NAR did not interfere with the sub prime debacle to any significant degree.

But now that we are here, what is NAR doing to help their declining Members? They are allowing Local Boards to raise or implement fees such as IDX access fees or raising dues completely. Between MLS fees, State Dues, National Dues, IDX Access fees, Super Key Fees and all of the other fees going up it is no wonder REALTORS® are abandoning ship and going out of business. It makes no sense to me. It is almost like an SUV Dealer going up on his vehicles because they are not selling. Someone please explain the logic here.

NAR needs to get off their collective asses and reign in their Local Boards. We need help not more or higher fees.

Our Local Board here in San Diego (SANDICOR) just went to a RETS (Real Estate Transaction Standard) system that replaced the old IDX (Internet Data Exchange) for the MLS (Multiple Listing Service). In addition to being a total disaster leaving outdated data on our San Diego real estate site for days, we are told there will be a new monthly fee associated with the new RETS service. This comes AFTER I paid my website guy to change over to RETS. Now I did NOT ask to go to RETS but have already had out of pocket expenses. This RETS update is a NAR mandate however, NAR states that all Boards must offer RETS by mid 2009, not replace IDX.

Both NAR and our state and local boards need to figure out ways to help real estate Agents make more income instead of ways to help us spend more. Otherwise we can look to our ranks to continue to diminish.