Above, Jason Haber

Back in January of last year, with the National Association of Realtors® (NAR) confronting multiple issues, Mauricio Umansky, a celebrity agent in Los Angeles, and Jason Haber, an agent with Compass in New York, announced their plan to start a new organization, the American Real Estate Association, with the intent of offering residential real estate professionals an alternative to NAR.

Fast forwarding to the present, this past week at RISMedia’s 37th Annual CEO & Leadership Exchange, NAR CEO Nykia Wright outlined the progress the country’s largest trade association has made over the last year, explaining that she and the leadership team are “going around the country, meeting people where they are and helping to understand what went wrong in the past, and trying to figure out what we can do to help chart a more meaningful and better future.”

In a wide-ranging interview with RISMedia, Haber commended Wright and NAR’s positive steps forward, while providing updates on the American Real Estate Association, which now has over 10,000 members. He emphasized that it’s illogical to think that any new group could be a direct NAR competitor. Instead, their idea is to create a unique voice focusing on elevating industry standards and addressing affordability issues in the housing market. And with an updated website still under the name American Real Estate Association, Haber also shared that there will be a rebranding this fall.

Michael Catarevas: Now that it’s been over a year since you started, what’s been happening?
Jason Haber: These are still very early days for us. We’re very confident in our growth plan that we’ll be announcing later this fall. While it’s exciting to reach a milestone like 10,000 members, we’re just getting started with our internal growth. A lot of the last year has been working on important, but ministerial matters to get us set up for success. And we’ve been having meetings and conversations with industry leaders and thought leaders around the country to understand where the needs are and how it is that we can be most impactful within the industry.

We’re hiring right now. It is very exciting to move from an all-volunteer organization to a staffed nonprofit. And once we hire the executive director, we’re going to look to fill other positions. When you start a nonprofit, it’s kind of like a black hole. There’s money in but no money out. We have no shareholders. We have no investors. So when Mauricio and I first announced, we were getting calls from venture capitalists who were interested in meeting with us and investing in the business, but we had to turn them all down because it was important that we’re a nonprofit.

MC: As far as the executive director, how close do you think you might be to hiring that person, and what must their qualifications be?
JH: We’re interviewing now. We’re getting a lot of amazing resumes and different people in the nonprofit world, but they don’t have real estate experience. Unless you understand the policy issues of the last few years, it’s a very difficult job. So we are looking for someone with a real estate trade group. It doesn’t have to be NAR, but some sort of real estate trade experience, or leadership experience at a firm so they understand the contemporary issues we’re facing.

MC: How closely are you monitoring the situation with NAR, and what do you think of how at our event last week, Nykia Wright said they’re turning things around?
JH: Well, I hope so. I’ve always said great things about Nykia, and we hope they can get the turnaround done. If they can, the industry’s better for it.

MC: Have you connected with NAR in any way? Do they acknowledge you?
JH: It’s a fair question. I don’t think they acknowledge or deny our existence, and I have not had any conversations with them. When we released our policy on what we call clear collaboration, which we had proposed as a replacement for clear cooperation, we did as a courtesy send it to NAR in advance of releasing it, just so they had the heads up because we didn’t want it to come across as adversarial. We were trying to be helpful by putting forth a solution, so we made it clear to them that it wasn’t done in an adversarial way. We got a thank you back. But otherwise, we don’t have much conversation with the leadership there.

MC: If someone is a member of your association, do they still have access to NAR MLSs? Or do they have to remain a member of NAR?
JH: We don’t advocate for agents to leave NAR or give up any MLS access. There are a number of markets where the three-way agreement has been challenged, so agents don’t necessarily need to be NAR members to get MLS access. We are aiming to carve our own lane in the industry.

MC: How do you raise money for a nonprofit?
JH: It’s very different from a for-profit venture. It takes a whole different route to raise money. We are developing sponsor relationships and adding lots of members, and we’ll have services that we’re rolling out this fall. It’s neat to see what started as an idea on a napkin grow into this nationwide movement. We think there’s a lane for us to exist in to be a strong voice in the industry. We don’t see ourselves as a NAR competitor per se. NAR has been around for over 100 years. It would be silly to benchmark us against NAR. What we are trying to do is to create a voice for ourselves and our agents that we think will better the industry, better the agents in the industry, and then also help the American consumer.

MC: So what do you tell people paying to join at this point? What are they getting other than promises for the future?
JH: Well, that’s the exact reason why dues were set at $20 for the first year. It was in many ways a kickstart, and people responded to that and understood. Now we have two forms of membership, the founding membership, which is $1,500 (good for 10 years of dues), and a basic membership of $20. We’re going to be closing the founding membership program soon and capping our founding member list. Those are folks who took a very big leap of faith. And we had way more people do that, several hundred, than I thought. Once we get the executive director and our staff in, we’re then able to start offering more and more services. 

One of our new partners is Forcefield Protection, a security app for real estate agents. We hear from our agents that security and safety in the field is a growing concern. Whether you’re showing a rural home at night or an apartment building in New York City, there is an increased focus on safety now, and we want to be responsive to that. So we teamed up with Forcefield Protection, a company started by a husband-and-wife team out of Tennessee. He was a Secret Service agent, protecting Presidents Bush and Obama, and she worked with the Navy Seals. 

September is Agent Safety Awareness month, and we’re rolling that out to our members for free for three months. So that’s our first partnership. And we have a bunch more we’ll be announcing later this fall and into early next year with big corporate sponsors who are excited to affiliate with our brand. 

Also, we will have a rebranding this fall. I can’t report the specifics of it because our agreement  isn’t signed yet. As part of that, we continue our conversations with firms around the country to understand what their needs are.

MC: Talk about your group’s goals overall now that it’s shown to have staying power.
JH: At the end of the day, the one word that sums us up is “elevate.” How do we elevate the industry? How do we elevate the industry in the eyes of the consumer? We’re currently ranked under the used car salesman. How do we raise the industry standards? We don’t believe that the industry succeeds by simply getting more and more agents. We’re the only industry I can think of where people can get a license quickly. A stockbroker who wanted to sell a single share of Apple stock would have to get sponsored by a firm first before they even took the coursework and licensing exams. But if I wanted to sell you a $235,000 home, which could be the biggest purchase of your lifetime, I can do that in most states in about 30 days. 

We think that part of elevating the industry means raising standards, removing the bad actors. Those who are in the industry should adhere to a very high set of rigorous professional standards. It’s not better for the size of the industry, but I think that’s less important than the quality of the industry. Our industry has been under assault from policymakers around the country. We have a bullseye because we’re low-hanging fruit.

MC: What about the affordability issue that’s constantly in the news?
JH: We’ve become the avatar for people’s frustrations with regards to affordability. This country has an affordability crisis right now. Industry professionals are getting part of the blame, as if we prop up home prices, which of course we don’t do. We’re market makers. We bring buyers and sellers together. We don’t artificially inflate prices. But the perception is that we’re part of the problem, when in reality our industry is part of the solution. What we need to do is put forth proposals that will help solve for affordability. You go around the country and hear the same thing. People can’t afford the cost of housing or they can’t afford to buy a home. And the more people pushed out of homeownership, the more we’re losing generational wealth opportunities for too many Americans.

Right now, we’re at this very dangerous point where too many people can’t afford to buy a home. So, as an industry, we’ve got to be advocating and on the forefront of affordability and putting forth proposals on affordability.

MC: You seem to be the spokesperson for the group. Is Mauricio still as involved as he was when you started?
JH: Oh yeah, he’s very involved. We’re going over resumes together right now, so he’s super involved. Mauricio and I are the guiding lights for the trade group as we founded it. But eventually this is going to be run by a whole bunch of other folks, not us. We don’t take any money. We actually lose money doing this because we’ve put money in, but we take no salary, we take no comp of any kind. Our goal is to get this set up and then turn it over to an amazing group of professionals, and we will work with them. But at the end of the day, it is going to grow well beyond Mauricio and I. We can see that already after we launched paid membership a year ago. Over the next six months, you’re going to see explosive growth from our trade group.

MC: What else should prospective members know you’re doing?
JH: We are developing a whole lot of whitepapers on certain policy points that we want to put in the public square. We think there is so much to do with affordability, and we have ideas on that and the important issues our members care about, and that the consumer cares about. And by the way, maybe we’ll work with NAR, too, on industry issues. It’s not a competition. We don’t see ourselves in competition with them in any way. So to the extent that we can work with them, great. A lot of what we do, we think will actually help them as well.

MC: As far as corporate sponsors, can you name any?
JH: We have agreements out, but one firm is actually a new firm, so they don’t want their name out there just yet. But yes, we have several corporate sponsors, and we’re hopefully getting to a place where in 2026 we could do our first live conference. It will be about a year from now. That’s the hope—that we can start bringing people together in person.

MC: Before the American Real Estate Association started, you were an agent with Compass. That was your full-time profession, right?
JH: Yes, and I still am. I also have a background in government politics, and I never fused that with my real estate work. This is the first time I’ve done that.

MC: What percentage of your time is taken up by the new association?
JH: It depends on the day. Some days it’s 90%, but usually it’s around 50/50.

MC: You don’t think it’s something you might want to stay involved with as a regular full-time thing as opposed to just staying with Compass?
JH: No. I have a growing business with Compass. We’re actually having a phenomenal year, so I’m interested in continuing to grow the business and helping the trade group blossom as best I can. It’s very important work to me, and I have the right background for it because I have a background in political organizing, campaigning, elections and government and public policy. There’s a lot of my past experiences that I bring to this. So I’m uniquely qualified. While I’m an agent, I also have these other experiences I bring to the fold. So I think that’s one of the reasons I sort of caught some people in the industry flatfooted. They were like, “Who is this guy? How is he doing all this?” But I had the skills to do it because I’ve done it before.

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