The NAR Membership Collapse Is Only Beginning

Time to read [5 minutes]

Takeways

• NAR’s plan uses zero-based budgeting and sharp compliance to rebuild trust after scandals​
• The strategy assumes 1.2M members, down sharply from the 2022 peak, reflecting continued erosion from lawsuits and leadership crises​
• Ongoing membership declines risk NAR’s influence and threaten key industry research if the drop accelerates​

I was reading a piece in Real Estate News: NAR adopts strategic plan with sharp budgeting, compliance focus, which reflects the vastly bureaucratic bent of its visionary CEO. It is a strategic plan to “right the ship” after decades of unethical and largely monopolistic behavior by the nation’s largest real estate trade group. What caught my eye in the piece was that the three-year initiative is based on a 1,200,000-member assumption, presumably for 2026, 2027, and 2028. NAR membership peaked in October 2022 at 1,600,866 and drifted lower through February 2024, reaching 1,496,707. After many decades of being fully transparent about membership, NAR pulled the plug in 2024, likely because the drop showed weakness, promulgated with the sexual harassment claims against their president and other associated scandals in 2023 and prior, and the colossal Sitzer-Burnett settlement in 2024. Returning to the transparency of sharing monthly membership numbers is a much more credible move than announcing numerous bureaucratic initiatives to prove NAR’s relevance that most members likely won’t care about. Click my visualization below to see how membership is trending.

Here’s My Membership Projection Analysis

After membership peaked in October 2006 at 1,370,758, the housing bubble collapse pushed membership lower, dropping under the 1 million level for 14 of the 17 months from January 2012 to May 2013. That’s a 27.3% drop from the October 2006 peak to May 2013, which was the last month below the one-million-dollar threshold on record. The sharp membership drop shows how vulnerable the trade group is to housing market conditions.

In more recent memory, membership peaked again in October 2022 at 1,600,886 but has been falling consistently ever since. The last monthly figure NAR shared was 1,496,707 in February 2024. This was the previous NAR monthly membership release up through today. A little more than a year later, membership was reported down by 43,017 in May 2025 to $1,453,690, which was spun as higher than the 1,400,000 forecast. I am encouraged about NAR leadership not being afraid to be realistic about membership.

NAR membership was forecast to drop to 1,200,000 over the next three years. I averaged the three years so that the 2027 (year 2) would average 1,200,000 members and bottom out at 1,000,000 in 2028.

If the trend continues, and NAR doesn’t justify why Realtors need them, membership could drop to around 500,000 by 2030.

Why Membership Is Dropping

Bad behavior and a complete lack of ethics have disgraced this trade group over the past decade. Hiding membership numbers doesn’t help credibility. Their lobby efforts haven’t been very effective in the past five years, either, which is a real problem. NAR has been the very reason monopolies are always bad. Bad behavior proliferated at the organization.

If membership keeps dropping, as I said before, all the housing research we rely on to trend the housing market, such as existing home sales, could be cut way back or dropped.

But they seem to be trying to rehab themselves, but it might be too late since they won’t have the monopoly they once enjoyed.

Final Thoughts

NAR is pledging greater transparency, including a return to publishing membership statistics and regular annual reports, aiming to provide a more credible and accountable member experience. The plan prioritizes member support, ethics reinforcement, partnership collaboration, and advocacy for property ownership, while also acknowledging that a continued decline in membership could threaten both NAR’s influence and key research resources that many in the real estate sector depend on.

They are trying to rebuild back to their dominance but its probably too late and too far gone despite best intentions.

The Actual Final Thought – Sometimes bullying real estate agents doesn’t always work out.

Did you miss the previous Housing Notes?