Congressional candidate Leigh Thomas Brown responds to the NAR president's resignation, calling it part of a broader leadership crisis. He argues real estate is the fifth-largest sector of U.S. GDP and criticizes NAR's governance structure, including vacant board seats and lack of decisive action. Brown urges members to demand bold leadership and support his campaign for North Carolina's 8th District.
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Good morning, and if this feels laggy or fuzzy, then I apologize. We are having major storms here in North Carolina, as are most parts of the country today. So hopefully the video quality will hold in there. I know that many of y'all are fully aware of the ground-shattering news that happened yesterday. A second National Association of Realtors president has resigned. And there are lots of questions out there and a lot of people wondering what's going on. Well, what I will tell you is this: we have a crisis in leadership, not just at the National Association of Realtors. We have a crisis of leadership as a country, y'all. This is no secret to anyone who's paying any attention to the news, who's got kids in the public schools, who is looking at upcoming elections with your eyes wide open. And why do I say we have a crisis in leadership? Well, at our top levels of organizations, we have resignations, we have retirements, we have candidates pulled from the ballot, we have spending that doesn't want to answer questions, we have straight-up lawfare all over the place. This boils down to a crisis on all levels. And now if you're watching this, you're wondering if I'm talking about the National Association of Realtors or talking about Washington, D.C. Could be that I'm talking about both. And the thing you have to understand is when you read headlines about things like a president resigning, you need to understand this is not about what happened. It's not about the background noise. It's about how we got here. And I don't know that it's really something we need to worry about with what exactly went on, because in the time since the news hit yesterday, I have had more text and phone calls with theories and ideas than I can shake a stick at, and frankly, that's not the most important thing to me. The most important thing right now is figuring out how we fix broken trust, y'all. That's what it boils down to, because at the end of the day, you have to understand that REALTORS® do matter. And I don't care if you're in real estate or not, but if you're a homeowner or a business owner, a landowner, or in any community, you know how much REALTORS® matter because they are the key to people figuring out real estate. So if you're in real estate and you're watching this, I need you to quit stressing out about what's happening at the National Association because your professional job function matters. Period. End of discussion. And in fact, why do REALTORS® matter so much? It's because real estate matters. I wish more of our elected officials understood that real estate represents the 5th biggest sector of American GDP. And if you would remember how valuable real estate is to communities, it's not just about houses and signs and yards. It's every time a house is transferred, somebody becomes an owner of the American dream. Somebody else has their equity loosened up to go do things with. Homeowners are tied into the community. They go spend money at local hardware stores. They buy carpet, they hire painters. They hire landscapers. They go buy things at HomeGoods and at little boutique shops, and they make those houses their own. And then what's really important about that fifth biggest piece of American GDP is that those homeowners pay property taxes, and they dig into their communities. They fix up neighborhood entrance monuments. They go to PTA meetings. They are dialed into their communities. Real estate matters. One of the things that's really made me irritated is as we're looking at our trade association and we get really focused internally on a top select few that are up there making decisions, we lose sight of the fact that real estate is part of what makes this country amazing and unique on planet Earth. We're one of two countries with a 30-year fixed mortgage, y'all. That's what makes real estate affordable. And I think we forget about that sometimes in our desire to satisfy the status quo. The beauty of real estate is that it is decentralized and competitive, and there's a REALTOR® everywhere. We're in every community, every zip code, and we're out there serving the public. And I think y'all forget that when you get wound up in these headlines. And you also forget that no matter what's happening at the top, when we have a leadership crisis, we have to figure out how to solve the broken trust and what solutions we can bring forward because trade associations matter. Now you might be mad at the National Association of Realtors. I've been mad from time to time. I'm the candidate that got removed from the ballot for being too conservative. But at the end of the day, I still know why this organization absolutely matters, because the work that the National Association of Realtors does, nobody else is going to do it, y'all. Now, if you're the person who thinks the organization is done for, I would urge you to change that opinion, because the policy work that this association has done and can do matters to neighbors in your community, in my community. I look at this 8th District where I am currently running for Congress, and all of the people who live in this district, man, they should have access to the American dream, and they should not be beat down by too many regulations and people telling them what they can and can't do. As you know, I'm tired of being told what appliances I can and can't buy, and who is going to speak up for the homeowners? Well, hopefully the National Association of Realtors will figure out how to correct course so they can continue speaking up, but I'm going to have to do it. If you want to know when we have a crisis of leadership, what are we supposed to do? You're supposed to raise your hand. You can do so much more than you ever realized. And if you're in real estate, you know this. You built that business from scratch in one of the hardest professions to survive in. I wish the public knew. I wish the public knew that realtors have a hard time surviving because this is a hard business. And they're so busy out there trying to create connections with consumers that some of y'all that are watching this, You don't have the foggiest idea what the headlines are about the National Association because you're busy out there trying to make a living through the professional practice of real estate and you're not involved in the volunteer shenanigans. And I say, high five, I'm glad you're busy, but you've got to get dialed in. I worry right now, y'all, I do worry because governance actually matters in any organization. When I stood up at the Board of Directors meeting in November and asked about a vacancy on our leadership team, The board of directors did not decide to do anything about it. So let me point something out to y'all. This organization at the top has a 7-person leadership team. One of those roles was unfilled. Another role is now vacant. We have 5 people in a body that should have 7 making the decisions for the organization. And I will tell you, one of the first things you need to do is pray for those 5, that they will have strength and courage of conviction, that they will be able to go against the tide and argue with past presidents if that's what's necessary. Sometimes we look to the past for inspiration, but sometimes we look to the past and say, thank you so much, we're moving on now. That's one of the reasons I'm running for Congress. It's time for a new vision and a new breed of leadership. Maybe we need a new vision and a new breed of leadership, not just at the National Association of Realtors, but everywhere in our lives. So my question to you is, are you willing to do it? Because you're going to have to learn how. You're going to have to learn how to be uncancelable. If we're going to serve in a future that is full of people that want to have opinions but not do anything, you're going to have to swim against the tide too. And so when you look at what's happening in leadership, again, we don't have to know exactly what happened to say, you know what, this is still my organization. If you are a dues-paying member, you're going to have to decide what you're willing to put on the line. Are you willing to raise your hand? And when I say raise your hand, I mean raise your hand and ask questions. I got in a lot of trouble for asking questions. Well, that's all right. As the representative John Lewis said, that's good trouble, cause some questions to be asked, y'all. This is your organization. And yes, you can ask about what happened, and maybe it's relevant and maybe it's not. And I will just say that I don't know the full truth because I wasn't in the room, so I'm not worried about that. What I'm worried about is how we correct course, because you have to correct course. I've fallen down and skinned my knee many times in life. I imagine any of y'all who grew up as a child in the less helmeted, less safety-belted era did the same thing. And whenever you skint your knee, what did your mama do before she put a Band-Aid on it? She cleaned it out. You got to clean out the problems. You got to open it up and say, I'm gonna find all the dirt, get it all out, deal with it, and then we bandage it up and we move on. I just don't think we've gotten all the dirt out of the wound yet. I look at what's happening in D.C., and I know that a bigger problem than our elected officials is the sheer size of this bureaucracy. It's got to get cleaned out. You know how good it feels in January to live up that resolution of some spring cleaning? Well, maybe it's time for spring cleaning on all levels, and that's not a bad thing. It does mean we have to show some grace because you and I don't know the full story, don't need to know the full story, but what we need to know is why we're serving. You need to know why this matters to you. Do you understand why you see real estate in such a vaunted position? Do you understand why we have our own network on cable TV with HGTV? I mean, real estate's a big deal. But until you, the practicing REALTOR®, take ownership of this, it's not going to get better. And I think things can get better. I believe always that there are opportunities to get better. I have to believe that. I have to. You have to as well. And I'm not gloom and doom, but when I look at the organization and I see the flaws, I'm going to point out the flaws and then I'm going to say, let's fix it because it's worth fixing. You have to decide if something's worth fixing or not. I'm obviously of the old school. I would rather fix something than buy a new one. In fact, one of our couches just over the New Year's holiday, it broke at a rental property that we have., and today's culture would say, just go buy another couch. And I said, no. I said, Steve Brown, come here, let's get some, some tools and you can fix it. I gave direction because I wasn't going to try and fix the couch, but my husband did. You know what? With a little bit of time and a little bit of effort, we fixed that couch. We didn't have to replace it. So what if this association is worth saving? If it's worth saving, here's what has to happen. If you are on the board of directors, you have to raise your hand. You have to stop chasing Volunteer assignments and name tags that don't mean anything if the organization is in trouble. You have to be the one that says, I have ideas. I've run a successful business at home. I'm willing to be creative and bring it forward. I'm willing to be canceled for saying something unpopular. I wish that for our leadership. I wish for them that they will say unpopular things if it's in the best interest of this organization and of the profession of real estate, and if it's in the best interest of the United States of America. I want leaders that are willing to be unpopular. That's one of the reasons I love term limits. I think that if you have term limits, you will have more people that speak up because they know that their clock is a ticking. And maybe that's part of our problem. When you think about these opportunities that we have to raise our hands, and it's not about raising your hand to holler at somebody, let me just be clear about that. I don't like us canceling people. I do like disagreement. Disagreement's okay. In fact, one of my dearest friends who is politically opposed to where I am, we have had quite a conversation going in a comment thread on Instagram, and I love it because it's good for everyone to see that disagreement is not necessarily unhealthy. Disagreement is good. Disagreement allows us to think and hear and grow, and that's what leadership needs to look like. Leaders need to step up that are willing to grow, that are willing to move into this space and be helpful. Maybe that's you, maybe that's not you, but maybe you're going to have to learn how to get behind somebody else and support them. I mean, y'all, question is right now 2024 is off to an odd start. It is January 9th. We are not even in double digits yet, and we've had aliens in the Miami Mall, and we have lost another president of the National Association of Realtors. To where we now have a governance crisis because 7 seats are only filled by 5. I do hope that we will see a special meeting of the board of directors and that the board will finally take some action and say this organization matters enough to speak up. I want you to understand that you have a position for a reason. And if you're watching this and you don't have a position, guess what? You do. You have a position. If you live in the 8th District and you're a voter and you're tired of seeing the same thing over and over, Maybe you need to say, I want to help elect Leigh Thomas Brown. Maybe you are a voter somewhere in a different state and you'd like to see something different. Go interview your candidates and find somebody you can stand behind. Maybe, just maybe, we stop listening to headlines and we do a little digging on our own. Then when we do our digging, we learn how to bring solutions forward because nothing matters if we stop bringing solutions forward. That's where America's always had our strength. We saw that things weren't working, And we make better versions of it. Always think about that phrase, the more perfect union. The same thing applies to the National Association of Realtors. We're always looking for better. That's what you do in your real estate business. You got to do it in life now, y'all. You've got to make a decision that this matters. So in 2024, I want you to decide something. If you believe in real estate, I need you to start talking about what you do for your clients and let your clients speak up about what you have done for them. And if you believe in this country, that you start to say the American flag matters and that patriotism matters, and that maybe the through line that we always had, that we were Americans together, maybe that comes back, we can solve all the crises in this country. Because of all the things that have irritated me about the division in this country, I absolutely hate that there are some who believe the American flag only belongs to one group and the other group doesn't like it. Get over that and let's decide that we have something in common. In real estate, the something we have in common is that servant's heart where we serve the public. We support the American dream. We bring homeownership forward. We speak against hedge funds and institutional investors, and we should learn to speak against EXG and BlackRock because that shouldn't be determining what we do every day as practitioners. So maybe if we start to put aside some of the things that divide us and some of those social issues that don't have anything to do with real estate and get drilled back down into the things that matter, we can move this direction forward with this association and with our businesses. And you know what? Because real estate's the fifth biggest piece of GDP, if we start pulling real estate in the right direction again, I think the country's gonna pull in the right direction again. I have to believe that. You know what Winston Churchill said? His quote's right here on the wall in my office because I love that man. He was a man of strength. He got canceled more than you and I are ever going to get canceled. And what did he do? He fought back. Now think about this. Winston Churchill said, I am an optimist. It does not seem to be much use being anything else. So that's what I'm going to ask you to do when you read about these crises in leadership in the national news media. That you choose to be an optimist about real estate, that you choose to be an optimist about what the organization can look like, has looked like, and can do in the future if it is fully supported and if it learns how to embrace disagreement and it learns how to embrace different ideas and learns how to focus on real estate and stop focusing on tearing anybody else down. And by the way, I don't— again, don't know what happened, don't need to know what happened because this is my organization. I'm talking about the organization. So dial it in, people. This has to matter to you. And by the way, you got to believe in yourself right now. One of the things this country needs desperately is people that believe in what they do and believe strongly in what they do and support what they do and defend what they do. This country needs people that are putting in the hard work and aren't afraid to put in the hard work. And when they make a mistake, they're willing to raise their hand and say, I own it, my mistake, my bad, I'm going to fix it and move forward. And when that happens, that we as their neighbors and their community supporters, that we say, "I still like you, I still love you." We all make mistakes. The question is, what do we do after the mistake? And right now, with our trust being broken and the work of the National Association being as important as it has ever been, if not more so, because of the sheer volume of attacks on organized real estate, Now is not the time to move from the arena into the bleachers. Now is the time to move on to the field. And that does not mean that you support your leaders in lockstep. Far from it. You have an obligation to speak up though. When they're right, tell them they're right. When you agree with them, tell them you agree with them. And when you disagree with them, tell them you disagree with them. And when they're wrong, tell them they're wrong, but don't be ugly about it. That's what has to be fixed. And by the way, that's the kind of approach I'm going to bring to DC. I bring solutions forward. I bring people forward.. And if you want a different kind of future for this country, then go elect a different kind of official. In the 8th District of North Carolina, my name's the bottom of the ballot. I like being last because the Bible says the last shall be first, and I hope that was referring to me. But you can vote for me, and you can tell anybody you know in North Carolina's 8th Congressional District they can vote for me, who is talking to you from my business that I own in downtown Concord in the heart of the district. I'm going to see my voters at the grocery store just like I see my real estate clients at the grocery store, and I don't want to have to duck over into a different aisle to avoid them. I want to walk right up to them, hug them, and ask them how they're doing and mean it, and I want to find out they got a problem so I can solve it because that's how we fix things. So my challenge to you when you read headlines about leadership and you read headlines about resignations, of course the shock comes first. The second thing that should come forward is you go ahead and pray for that person because you don't know what went on. I don't know what went on. My name's Bennett. Nayin Bennett. Now's the time to pray for those who have stepped aside, pray for those who have stepped in, and then take action to fill the empty slots. This is the time for the board to call for a special meeting and say we need to elect somebody to both of those vacant roles. So that our leaders can have a full contingent of support for making very complicated decisions at a very complicated time. Because I'm gonna tell y'all something, if organized real estate goes down, property rights goes down. And if private property rights go down, this American experiment will fail. I'm not willing to let that happen. And if you want to fight for this country and you want to fight for everything that makes America amazing, it comes back to real estate, whether you like it or not. So strap on your armor. It's time for the battle. You can go to LeighThomasBrownForCongress.com if you want to support my campaign, because I'm gonna tell you something. In the event that the leadership has wavered and does not have the focus to get it done, this girl's gonna get it done. I'll be your voice. I'll be your voice in DC. And if we disagree, I'll still be your voice because I'm going to earn it every single day, just like I've done in my real estate business. And maybe if we all decide to lead like that, where we work for it every single day, we'll get back to great things again. There's no reason we can't. I believe we can. And if you do too, get in the fight. It's not over yet. It's only January 9th.
