American Real Estate Association targets advocacy growth as membership climbs toward 100,000

Entrepreneurship isn’t new to Compass agent Jason Haber. But building a national trade association is a different challenge. Over the past two and a half years, Haber and The Agency‘s Mauricio Umansky have learned firsthand what it takes to launch the American Real Estate Association (ARA).

“I never started a nonprofit before, and it is very different from starting a business in terms of raising capital because there are no shareholders or investors bringing money in,” Haber said. “On the one hand, it’s freeing because you don’t have investors to worry about, but it also makes things take a lot longer.” 

Later this month will mark two years since ARA opened up membership to the housing industry, and while Haber said that in today’s instant gratification culture they wanted to provide members with as much as possible right away, they had to “resist the urge to hurry up and go fast.” 

“We wanted to do things the right way and build brick by brick,” Haber said. 

Building a board

These efforts have started to catch the attention of leaders across the real estate industry who want in on the action. This movement began slowly last summer when real estate technology firm RLTYco partnered with the organization and its CEO and co-founder Briggs Ellwell joined the association’s board of directors. This trend continued into last September when Douglas Elliman decided to align with ARA, integrating its more than 6,600 agents into the association’s membership, in addition to its president and CEO Michael Liebowitz and general counsel Deva Roberts joining the board. 

Things have picked up quite a bit in recent weeks, first with REMAX president and chief growth officer Chris Lim and investor Andrew Dodge joining the board, with ARA providing all REMAX agents in the United States with a complimentary first-year membership. This move was quickly followed by Compass International Holdings announcing that all agents, who are brokered at any of company-owned operations, will receive complimentary membership for the remainder of 2026 and all of 2027.

“This is the evolution of two years of good foundational work we put in,” Haber said. “I think it is clear that we are out of startup mode, and we are becoming more established in the real estate community.”

For Haber, the American Real Estate Association’s recent board expansions and membership growth is just the start. 

“The board will continue to get bigger, but I always want it to be small enough that I know everyone’s names,” Haber said. “We will eventually have leaders from inside and outside of the industry to provide us counsel and give us an outside perspective on things.” 

Prior to REMAX joining the organization, Haber said ARA had roughly 30,000 members. He anticipates that the trade group will have at least 100,000 members by the end of the year. 

Advocating for the future

Haber said when they first launched the American Real Estate Association, they thought they may only going to exist for a short time to push the industry’s other trade associations to improve, but now he feels like ARA is “in it for the long haul.”

“For us, it’s about elevating the industry, elevating our agents and elevating our standing in the public sphere — how do we earn back public trust in real estate agents as a community?” he said. 

In order to achieve this goal, Haber said ARA is focusing on its advocacy efforts, most recently highlighted by its partnership with Missouri Realtors to oppose Amendments 4 and 5 on Missouri’s Aug. 4 statewide ballot.

“We want ARA to be the organization where you flash the bat signal, and we come running to help. That is exactly what happened in Missouri,” Haber said. “A lot of credit is due to the Missouri Realtors’ association because they put industry politics aside and said ‘What is best for our members?’ They decided that was getting as many people onto their team as possible. We want to be part of solutions for the industry.” 

According to Haber, ARA’s involvement in Missouri opened the door for more conversations with other state and local Realtor associations about how ARA can aid in their advocacy efforts, something he hopes to see expand in the coming months. 

Events nowhere else

In addition to expanded advocacy efforts, Haber said ARA is also looking to grow its events. So far, all of ARA’s events have been held in New York in conjunction with ARA’s first local chapter the New York Residential Agent Continuum (NYRAC). From these early events, Haber said they learned what does and doesn’t work as well, as what agents are interested in. 

“We’ve found that agents are interested in being connected with policy makers and elected officials, so we’ve done things like a transportation forum, and we did an event with the city planning commissioner on the new zoning code in New York called the City of Yes,” Haber said. 

He said they hope to expand these efforts to other parts of the country, but they are focused on ensuring that these events are things agents cannot get anywhere else. 

An association agents want to join

Looking ahead, Haber said ARA remains focused on providing value for its members.

“We always want to be the trade group that you want to join as opposed to a trade group that you feel like you have to join,” he said. “Those are two very fundamentally different things. If people feel like they have to join us, then I feel like, at least to some degree, we lost the plot.”  

To help accomplish this, Haber said ARA’s board members are constantly seeking feedback of what agents and members want from a national trade group.

“We are very much a trade association built for agents by agents that understand the day-to-day lives and struggles they are experiencing,” Haber said. 

As the American Real Estate Association heads into its next phase of growth and development, Haber said he is more focused on things like impact than membership count.  “As we grow, we have the opportunity to have more impact, but it is on us to deliver and that is our plan,” he said.