The REALTOR® Brand: Are We Fixing the Right Thing?

Look, y'all, when I said my inbox was full this week, I would have thought that having the 250th birthday of America would have slowed down the sheer volume of real estate stuff going on, but it just seemed to go to the next level. And I'm so excited to share with y'all some, some inside baseball that you might not know about some of these stories that are going on in the press. Now I'm going to try and watch the chat. I've been terrible about this. And hello, Gwen. We're not really having a webinar. This will be some Leigh Thomas Brown viewpoints on things that might be useful in your local marketplace, but will definitely be important for your business. And hello, Sue. All right, kids, let's dig right in over here and talk about this headline, which you may have seen where NAR, the National Association of Realtors, has been asking MLSs and members to be very thoughtful about the REALTOR® trademark. And actually, that headline is half of that story. So I want to talk to you about the REALTOR® trademark for a second. If you've noticed, the National Association has added attorneys and added staff to better police the REALTOR® trademark. So that will be the R with a little circle on it. The fact that you have to write REALTOR® in all caps, or it has to start with a capital R and have a little trademark on it. It's not lowercase. It is a trademark term. Now, that's what the National Association of Realtors is beefing up to protect, to protect the trademark. There's many members out there who have used the trademark incorrectly and they've gotten a letter from a lawyer about it. And by the way, if you are a REALTOR® and you want to know all the rules, just go to nar.realtor® and look it up. The question becomes, what exactly are they doing right now, throwing a lot of money behind protecting the trademark? Well, the trademark is weak. And when I say weak, I mean in the legal sense, knowing that I'm not a lawyer, but I got lawyer friends. If you think about, for example, Kleenex, I was going to show you my Kleenex box that's sitting over there, but that's actually not Kleenex brand. It's Puffs brand because I like Puffs better than Kleenex. But they're all called Kleenex because in the course of time, some words lose their trademark status because they become ubiquitous. There's lots of things in the South. We pretty much call every soda Coca-Cola, and people will ask you, well, what kind of Coke do you want? I want a Sun Drop. Well, we call everything a Coke. I have found out people from up north do not do that because, you know, I married one. But you start realizing that the term REALTOR® is a trademark term that is owned by the National Association of REALTORS®. But if you talk to anybody in the public, any buyer, seller, lady at the grocery store. They don't think there's a difference between realtor and real estate agent. They just don't. It's because over the last, over 100 years, it has become a ubiquitous term. Now, the reason that NAR is spicing up their legal coverage is because the trademark is weak and there are lawyers that want to break the trademark. If you're the person who wants to know why the trademark would be broken, you probably know this. Which company would love to be able to take over the trademark? Oh, it starts with a Z. It might be Zillow. It could be homes.com and the foreign money that owns it. It could be anybody. It could be Compass might want to own the trademark. So if you start realizing that there are a lot of big money groups that would love to own the R, NAR does need to protect it so that members can use it. That's one standpoint, is to protect the usage of it. But there is a bigger reason. And if you wondered what's going on with our association, let me share with you one of the primary reasons NAR needs to protect the REALTOR® R. It is because as a member of the National Association of REALTORS®, all members have to belong to 3 associations. It's called the 3-way agreement. I, as a REALTOR® in North Carolina, belong to my local association of REALTORS®. In fact, I belong to multiple local associations. I belong to the North Carolina Association and I belong to the National Association. I'm also licensed in South Carolina, so I belong to the South Carolina Association. And you start realizing that as members, we're paying dues to a lot of places. Now, my dues paying to South Carolina, that's optional because that's not my primary state, but I have a license there and I feel obligated to belong to the trade association in the state where I carry a license because they're doing so much heavy lifting. I would always belong to my state association. However, looking at all those dues, how many members of the REALTOR® world would belong to all three if given the choice? I just don't think it's that many. I do believe most REALTORS® would stay with their local association given the choice. I believe most would stay with their state given the choice. I don't know right now how many REALTORS® would stay with the National Association if they didn't have to belong. That's just a cold, hard fact. And if you think I'm being ugly and rude, ask any REALTOR® if they want to stay. They're going to have a variety of answers, and the variety of answers seldom become, I would absolutely belong to all three at all times forever. It's just not the real world. We have people that are looking to manage their finances better. Maybe they don't get the benefit out of the membership that they'd like to get. Now, spoiler alert, there's plenty of benefits people could be getting out of it, and I'm not going down that road. I'm just saying, if you asked them today, would you belong to all three if you were given a choice, many of them would not say yes. So what's holding that three-way agreement together? How is it that the real estate profession has been able to hogtie its members into all three for so many years? The answer is the REALTOR® trademark. If you look at the charters for the organizations, whether it's the local or state level, there is language in those charters that talks about the use of the term REALTOR® and if you look at your association, I belong to the North Carolina REALTORS®. If the REALTOR® name gets tossed into a murky water where it doesn't belong to the national association, can the North Carolina REALTORS® call themselves North Carolina REALTORS®? Well, maybe not. What if Zillow buys the REALTOR® trademark because it gets cracked up in a court of law? That's the future that happens if the REALTOR® trademark gets attacked. And so the states and the locals are tied to the trademark. And if the trademark breaks, then that means there's no ownership of the name, which means the states and the locals might not have to be tied to the national. Now, that sounds weedy and complicated. It is weedy and complicated. But if we consider the fact that multiple lawsuits have been filed in the last couple of years challenging the three-way agreement and have not been successful, it's possible that there is another one percolating that would come after it from the trademark perspective. And that's why NAR is beefing up the enforcement of the trademark. And by the way, one of the legal arguments that says this is a protected term or this is not has to do with whether or not you have enforcement of your trademark. So NAR is actually doing the right legal step to protect the trademark by beefing up their legal team to do so. Okay, I know it's kind of crazy, but it's something we have to pay attention to because in realtor world, what we don't pay attention to comes back to bite us later. And for the record, if you were curious about what Leigh Thomas Brown would do if the three-way agreement shattered, I would belong to my local association because the Central Carolina Realtors are where I do transactions. I really love the people in my local market. I would be a member of the North Carolina Realtors because we do amazing work in Raleigh, our state capital, and they provide my state forms. And most importantly, I have Legal Hotline. Love you, Legal Hotline. And then the National Association. As much as the National Association has personally tried to destroy me in a lot of different ways, even though I am a dues-paying member like anybody else in good standing, I'd still probably belong just for the library and the research, if nothing else. And frankly, for Dr. Yoon. So that's the Leigh Thomas Brown opinion on things. But you are going to have to pay attention to these your own self. Now, all of that to say There was an opinion article that came out in Real Estate News. It said NAR's monitoring tech is pointed in the wrong direction. Now, I have to point this one out because the woman who wrote this little article about trademark violations, she was talking about how the association needs to raise the bar. I agree, we need a higher level of professionalism. I don't think it comes from the National Association. I think it's brokers like myself who have to be responsible for a higher level of professionalism. It's got to come close to the agent, not from any national big voice. But I was very tickled to see that the person writing this article is the founder of Selling Later, and I had to look her up because they call her a real estate thought leader. But all the research I did, I can't see that she's ever sold a house or worked with a consumer. But she has been working with my nemesis, Stephen Brobeck, the head of the Consumer Federation of America for so many years, who's now in a different think tank, who has spent the last 40-plus years trying to eliminate Realtors and telling us we don't deserve to be paid. So when I see that she spent all her time trying to say Realtors don't deserve to get paid, then she might be right that they're monitoring the wrong thing, but, uh, just Be careful, y'all. Read the bylines of the people writing articles before you get too wound up, and then just ask yourself what the ulterior motive is. I don't trust people who want to eliminate my profession of entrepreneurs. I absolutely do think there is room for improvement and innovation, and there's great ideas out there, but I do not believe that realtors are bad guys. Say whatever you will. But then I did get very tickled because this was what we got from the National Association this week in Realtor News Monthly was about a webinar on saving time and making more money. And it's about AI. Now, I love the guys leading this. The Lobster is one of my favorites in real estate education space. But if NAR wants to be a respected voice, then Realtor News Monthly can't be a make more money AI webinar. What, what are we doing? I mean, Y'all know I'm kind of an old person when it comes to AI. I'm using it reluctantly because I do think it's a tool of Satan, but I'm not going to let it replace the strength of my humanity and my relationships. And if the National Association was really focused, they'd be talking about how do we enhance our relationships in a world that's full of AI? How do we teach our members to really get to, to talk to people about things? Now, I did also see this headline that the NAR says they're not abandoning MLSs. This was also in Real Estate News. And when you read this article, Andrea Rambilia— I never say your name right, Andrea, I'm so sorry— she used to work for Inman. She does a really good job and gets into rooms she's really not supposed to be in, which I think is good investigative journalism, because half of this article was about the MLS committee meeting at the legislative NAR mid-year meeting, formerly known as mid-year. And says in there she wasn't supposed to be in the meeting but got the transcript, which I thought was awesome. NAR basically is saying they're still going to be involved in the Multiple Listing Service business. Uh, no, stop it, stop it, NAR, stop it. I'm not in the inner circle of anything. I am the outside-the-matrix member looking in. Stop it, get out of the MLS world altogether. The DOJ is interested in MLS's Y'all can't afford to lose any more lawsuits. Why don't y'all focus on something else? Please, please focus, focus. Let go of the MLSs. Let them do their own thing, make their own rules. They're going to get bought by hedge funds and rolled up into a national one anyway, as that meme says. What are we doing? So just stop it. Okay, now I did see this one, um, y'all. The— if you're a home buyer, if you happen to have landed on my Leigh Thomas Brown channel somehow and you're an actual consumer, then congratulations for hanging out with me through the weeds of how the profession works and the association works. But if you are out there trying to buy or sell a house, if you're reading headlines, you've probably got whiplash, and whiplash is not something that's going to help you buy property. And we talk about the good news in the housing market. What you'll find is that in most markets around the country, it's flattened out. I wouldn't say that we're on a downhill slide, although some markets are feeling some real pricing pressure like Austin, Texas. But it's because it got overbuilt. Oh, wait a minute. What's the legislation talking about? Oh, overbuilding. I mean, we're in a, a stasis in the market right now. And so when you see that, it's good news for buyers, cuz right now for the first time in a while, in many markets you can negotiate. Sellers are fairly reasonable if it's the sellers who have to sell and not the ones that are testing the market. And for all of my old guard friends out there, hey Deborah, I was gonna call you my old guard friend cuz you've been around for a minute too. We all know that in every market, there's sellers who are serious about selling and sellers who aren't. And right now we have buyers that are getting matched up with serious sellers. And so looks like a pretty good deal right now. There's always going to be good news in the housing market if you're buying. If it was during the COVID market when things ran up, good news might have been they want a house, but they got low interest rates. Now the interest rates aren't what anybody really wants, but it's what we have. And I should go ahead and add here, when it talks about home buyers getting good news, it's not really on interest rates. The Fed chief came out yesterday and said they're likely to raise rates because inflation's not cooling down. And because some of y'all don't watch all of my videos, although you could, I mean, it's gonna be highly informative, entertaining, and probably exhausting to you. I'm gonna give you the truth about inflation and interest rates. When inflation is high, interest rates can't go down. Interest rates have to be higher than inflation to push inflation down. That's how money works. And you can get mad at me all you want. You can say we have to lower interest rates, it's killing the housing market. Say whatever you wanna say. Go to the basics of your first economics class in college at 101. Inflation and interest rates are correlated numbers. If inflation starts to fall, interest rates can follow. When inflation is up, then you have interest rates have to be higher. And if you wanna stop inflation, we have to stop printing money. Inflation happens when too many dollars are competing for too few goods. That's how it works. Congratulations, you've survived Econ 101. Okay. Oh, look, I got other friends over here. Hey, Babette. Hey, Patricia. Hey, April. Hey, Mike. All right, so back over here to the good news for buyers. I did kind of briefly point out a different economic situation, which is supply and demand. And we start thinking about supply and demand we're going to have to consider the fact that the legislation that's coming through D.C. right now is all about supply. If all we are expected to do in real estate is churn out field after field of cookie-cutter vinyl box houses, that's not solving our problem because there's also a demographic cliff coming. People are not having enough babies. So if you look at the history of what happened in Japan, In fact, I think a very wise person looks at historical trends in other countries. You'll realize that in Japan, they stopped having kids while they were continuing to build. And as the population aged and there was nobody to replace them, there was nobody to buy real estate. I'm concerned. I will tell you the truth right now. I'm concerned that we are overbuilding at the wrong time because, A, we have too many illegals that live in this country that are taking up housing., and that was in all the news this week. Don't y'all get mad and burn me up in the comments. I have been talking about this for years and begging NAR to ask the questions about the impact of illegals on the housing situation. And I was told from the depths of Washington, D.C., that NAR was not going to talk about it, not going to touch it, refused to even look at it. And I said to this person, I said, data's agnostic. Data is data. We have to address the fact that there is a demand component to what's going on in housing, and I was told NAR refused to look at it. Well, guess what, y'all? The chickens have come home to roost, and now we have inflated housing prices. We finally do have some conversation about what's happening with the H-1B visas, which, if that starts to pull back demand a little bit, do we really need to build as many houses as DC says? We're going to have to have honest conversations at some point,, and I'm glad y'all are here to listen to me ramble about it, but I sure wish that one of the think tanks that exist would look at this strictly from an agnostic data point and take into account the history of places like Japan. Okay, so you may have seen this come out in the news. Kelly Blue Book is launching a home valuation platform. I mean, can anybody else try to make money off of real estate? I ask you. So of course I reached out to Kelly Blue Book because they're only open in 10 states right now, and North Carolina is one of them because we're so popular right right now, and they're doing the same thing everybody else does. They're planning to sell leads to agents. So what does that mean? Well, it just means this. If you read that article, it's actually full of a lot of snark, which entertained me to a high degree because they were talking about the inaccurate valuations on other platforms. Oh, I think Kelley Blue Book was throwing shade at Zillow. Just say it was hilarious. And so I'm reading it and thinking about how accurate is Kelley Blue Book on vehicles? I mean, it just depends, right? Because Kelley Blue Book— all right, think about it this way. Kelley Blue Book's auto valuation, when you are selling your car, you've got a 2012 Chevy Cruze, which is what my son drives. It is a very reasonable sedan. If I'm putting that into Kelley Blue Book to get a number, am I realistic about condition? Am I going to talk about the place where his friend hit him in the back bumper at the school parking lot? And we're like, you know what, it's a 2012 Chevy Cruze. We're We ain't worried about it. Didn't chip the paint. We good. Or am I going to tell Kelley Blue Book it's in excellent condition because it's only a second driver and he's a very responsible driver, it's never been in a wreck? That's not a wreck. And so do we inflate the condition of our vehicles for Kelley Blue Book? You know that you do. And you know why you do it? Because then you're going to go to Facebook Marketplace and list your car. Well, that's what the young people do. And so you list your car on Facebook Marketplace, you're like, it's in great condition, and you use the Kelley Blue Book number. And then the person comes to your house and looks at it and says, hang on just a minute. There's some things you did not disclose to me. You're like, well, just make me an offer because you knew that number was higher because you planned to negotiate. Is this the angle they're taking with real estate? Because how many times have y'all, my practicing realtors, been to a listing appointment with the seller who said, my house is a straight up 10, might even be an 11 because I have the only floor plan in this neighborhood like this one. It's amazing. And you walk in the door really excited and you walk in, you're like, mm-mm-mm, this is most assuredly not a 10. Maybe it's a 7 if I'm generous. The photos looked really good. By the way, home sellers, if you two are hanging out with us over here in real estate nerd world, our job is to take really great flattering pictures. So yes, buyers, when we take you through and you're like, this looked better in the pictures, well, we're paid to do that. So sorry. So now that I think about this, is Kelley Blue Book going to also be able to provide inflated valuation numbers, which means that an agent buying a lead from there is getting somebody with the wrong idea. They're going to have to bring them back down to planet Earth. I don't know. It's a new program. Of course, I have made my appointment to get the pricing for my zip code because I cannot wait to find out where they fall in that competitive pricing model. But just know, Realtors, everybody wants to sell your people back to you. The secret to not having your most trusted people go to Kelly Blue Book to get information is to be a repository of information yourself. I'm just saying. Maybe instead of the next video at your open house trailing a fingertip down the countertop, can we make that stop please? Because I can't make fun of it any more than I already do. If I'm trailing my finger down a countertop, I'm looking for dust and crumbs, to be honest. We need to be telling people more about the way real estate works in our local market so they can make better decisions. Just saying. And speaking of, real estate local market. I did laugh really hard when I saw this Business Insider article about the new luxury real estate agent uniform: Botox and stylists and wardrobes. Y'all about died because I live in Cabarrus County, North Carolina, and so I feel pretty dressed up today because I fixed my hair and I match because it is going to be 100 degrees again today. And Botox, I just— no, no, it's formaldehyde. What are you doing, people? What are you doing? Why? Why? Just take your wrinkles, you earned them. I earned all these crow's feet. Well, and the lady that they interviewed is in her 30s. I'm thinking, baby, it's gonna get rough for you later if you're getting Botox now. And she's talking about spending $100,000 on clothes. If I spend $100,000 on clothes in my entire lifetime, then I could have bought the whole Marshalls that I stalk on Tuesdays when the new stuff comes in. You don't need that. And Maybe if you're in Miami or you're in Manhattan, it's different for you, but I'm just not gonna speak to y'all. You're wonderful. But to the rest of the country, if you read an article like that, it's probably going to make you think that you need to go spend outside your budget. I believe that a highly competent and educated and very knowledgeable REALTOR® who understands the inside situations going on in a marketplace when it comes to water and sewer and roads and building and data centers and flood cameras, when you know the stuff, That's way more valuable than you spending money on putting shots in your face and buying shoes that probably hurt a lot too. So when you read that stuff, you've also got to remember the public reads that. And they don't think real highly of us when we look like the Selling Sunset and the million-dollar agents. At least nobody around here does. They laugh at that because they know it's not them. And one of our skills in real estate is to be relatable. And to be real so that you can be honest. The more genuine you are, the more honest you're going to be. That's just how things go. And if you want to know the truth of that, then just, I mean, look at the videos I make while I'm out running with sweat pouring down my face and all my bags showing. And people know that it's very truthful because what do I have to hide? Now, the last headline I had to show y'all, it came from Nextdoor. So full disclosure, I don't know who invented Nextdoor. I don't know if they were a sadist or they were just, um, creating their own entertainment, frankly. But Nextdoor is endlessly entertaining to me, especially on July 4th. I can't remember who made the comment, but somebody had finally commented, yes, those are all gunshots. And I just died laughing because the fireworks were going off. It was 360 fireworks on July 4th. It was amazing. I love this country. I love that we all have fireworks in common except for the 5 angry people who get online to complain about other people's fireworks. But this headline was on here. Concord Mills is the big mall near me. That's the Simon-owned mall. It was the number one tourist attraction in North Carolina for a while. Since COVID it's fallen off because they've lost a bunch of stores because y'all all get your Amazon Prime things and you're buying throwaway fashion, so you just don't go to the mall. And even if you did, Concord Mills now has a problem with having to have police presence there because there's shootings that happen in the parking lot and there's foolishness with the teenagers inside. And frankly, the safest people there are the old people that still go there to walk their circles. And man, the mall walkers, you shouldn't get in their way. And actually, maybe they should be security. But I get distracted. I got tickled by this article from the Charlotte Observer because the Charlotte Observer leans way to the left, which many of our news publications do, so you have to take their stuff with a grain of salt to bring it back to the middle of reasonableness. Concord Mills is the latest local mall trying to evict tenants over unpaid rent. Oh, you can feel them clutching their pearls. They're thinking, how in the world could some mean, angry landlord dare charge a business rent? Are you serious? Come on, y'all, we are going to have to learn how to live in a world that has consequences for your actions, and that means if you did not pay the rent, you do not stay. And I blame the CDC and COVID for that because for so long we were told there was an eviction moratorium and nobody could be forced to leave. And apparently these businesses think the same thing, that they should get to keep trying to make money and not pay any for the space that they're in. Well, sugar, if you're not gonna pay rent, then either make it an Etsy shop online or go buy your own space and then find out what it's like when the tenants don't pay the rent, because that landlord is still responsible for the upkeep of the building and the parking lot, and they're responsible for the taxes. And frankly, if they don't keep the air conditioning on and the lights on, then there's nobody to come in and shop, and you'd be miserable too. And Charlotte Observer, why are you making a headline that defends the people not paying rent? It's ridiculous, y'all. But anyway, there's your headlines for this week and a couple of commentary things. But mainly, I appreciate you showing up over here, and if you would please make sure to tell some of your real estate friends to pay attention about this trademark stuff, because I want more realtors to understand the depths of what goes on at the world's largest grassroots trade association, because we should know this. If we currently have somewhere around 1.3 million realtors, and yes, it's down, which yes, that's normal in a market that has settled out a lot. We should also know that that number will fall when the three-way breaks. So the organization will not have nearly the impact that it does right now. And the impact right now, a lot of people have questions. Oh, let's see, um, Mike is saying, actually, let's find out how to pin a comment. No, I don't have it. I don't know how to do it on the screen. I got to figure this out. Overbuilding rentals and illegals are renting. I don't think the renters are the problem. I don't know. I think that you've got landlords who are renting to the highest dollar possible, Mike. And if the highest possible dollar is the federal government writing a check, then I think there's a lot of fraud that needs to be checked out. So there's a lot of push-pull on all of these sides. There's not one, one easy solution to everything. Let's see, 30-year-old— hey Sylvia, your 30-year-old has 3 besties that all invested in real estate. Hey, good job to y'all. They all just retired at 30 and all 3 are married, but none have children. They need to have some, have 3, 4, 5 each. I'm not Catholic, but the Catholics need to spread the word on having more kids because if we're going to make sure America's here for 250 more years, it's gonna take some kids. So anyway, uh, let's see. I think I got the couple of comments from y'all. One day I'll learn how to pin it so I can talk to you on the screen. But in the meantime, I'll see you next week. Make sure you hit the bell to subscribe and get your notifications and share this with a friend. Most importantly, Do real estate really well if you're in real estate. And if you are in the public out there, I just want you to know that we have REALTORS® every day who are working in hopes of getting compensated so that they can do great things for you. So if you know a REALTOR®, be nice to them and tell them thanks for what they're doing, because I think real estate matters to the American dream. I'll see y'all next time, if I can figure out how to turn off my screen.