Realtor
A realtor is a highly competent professional in the field of real estate, who belongs to the National Association of Realtors (NAR). As presented by the NAR, ‘Realtor’ is an official collective membership mark that indicates real estate associates who have subscribed to the NAR’s code of ethics and hold its membership.
Is Realtor a salesperson
Realtors are sometimes confused with real estate agents, which is not the same. Agents are licensed specialists who are authorized to help people buy and sell property. To simplify, they can be thought of as real estate salespeople. In contrast, realtors are agents or other real estate representatives who chose to join the National Association of Realtors and follow its ethical laws. They uphold high standards of proficiency and base their real estate communications on honesty and dignity. The educational courses and toolkits provided by the NAR to its members for dues payments add to the high-level professionalism they show.
Association of Realtors
All Realtors are members of the NAR and sometimes local real estate board or association. The NAR was started in 1908 as the National Association of Real Estate Exchanges and comprised 120 members, jointly representing 19 boards and a state association. The range of real estate representatives who can become a part of the NAR includes all possible specialists: brokers, counselors, property managers, appraisers, to name a few. By October 2021, NAR database had over 1,5 million members. The majority of them were real estate agents that made up 68 percent, the rest worked as brokers, 20% of whom owned their firm, while the remaining 13% associated with a brokerage.
Realtors’ code of conduct
The title ‘Realtor’ is supposed to separate experts who earned themselves good reputation in the real estate industry from less qualified practitioners. All realtors subscribe to the NAR’s code of ethics, which sets out the standard rules of conduct with a client, the public, and colleagues.
The extracts below contain some underlying principles of a proper realtor behavior. A realtor must:
- provide full, truthful and transparent representation of property-related information that matters for the transaction, while avoiding exaggerations, misstatements and concealment of those facts;
- ensure honest advertising and marketing representations;
- commit to the protection of their customers’ interests and engagement into the deal.
Realtor trademark: policy of use
The ‘Realtor’ is an official trademark, registered by the state and allowed to be used only in accordance with the NAR’s policy. Its rules suggest that the members of the association are only permitted to put the trademark by their name or the name of their brokerage to conduct business related to real estate, not any other.
The NAR also prohibits the use of the trademark by its members when registering their real estate business name. In the future, in case the person gets suspended or expelled from association by the board, they will no longer have the right to use the trademark. Change of the company name will cause legal issues both for a former associate and association.
If a NAR’s member wants to use the trademark in their name, it should be put in all capitals and separated from the name by a symbol. No descriptive words or phrases are allowed to be used in line with the trademark, preceding or following the term to modify it for marketing.
