In her latest message to members, NAR CEO Nykia Wright set a clear tone for the future of the National Association of REALTORS®.
Published October 10 on NAR’s website, the letter outlines a 2026–2028 roadmap built on transparency, accountability, and modernization. It’s the clearest signal yet that Wright intends to redefine how NAR operates, communicates, and earns back member trust.
Byron Lazine and Nicole White broke down the letter and its meaning for the industry in this week’s episode of The Real Word.
A Commitment to Transparency and Accountability
Wright began by reaffirming her leadership principles, stating that she’s committed to guiding NAR with transparency, accountability, discipline, and focus.
“That commitment is not just a guiding principle or a tagline. It’s at the foundation of every effort we make to rebuild trust and reimagine how this association can serve you better or help you get you to your next transaction.”
She emphasized that transparency is no longer an occasional initiative but “the new normal.” According to her letter, this approach has already shaped how the association is gathering input and developing its next strategic plan.
Building a Plan from the Ground Up
Throughout 2025, NAR states it has been collecting feedback from its members and partners at an unprecedented scale. According to Wright, the association has engaged with more than 100,000 REALTORS® through surveys, forums, and focus groups.
Leadership has also met with hundreds of industry professionals, from large enterprise firms to regional brokerages, while encouraging local associations to host their own broker summits.
This process is guiding the creation of NAR’s 2026–2028 Strategic Plan, which Wright said will determine how the organization modernizes, operates, and serves members in the years ahead.
The objective is to ensure there are no surprises about NAR’s direction or intentions.
Yet, there are plenty of agents who are skeptical. NAR leadership over the years has, for the most part, tuned out any dissenting voices, particularly any voices critical of the Realtor® brand. And real leadership demands a different approach, as Byron pointed out:
“Part of listening is having the conversation with those who think your organization has failed over and over and over again. Part of it is answering the challenge, even if you don’t have an answer in the moment.”
Defining NAR’s 2026–2028 Value Proposition
At the center of Wright’s message is a renewed focus on NAR’s purpose. Every organization, she said, must be clear about why it exists, especially during times of change.
The 2026–2028 Strategic Plan will include a new Value Proposition that places members at the center of everything the association does.
Wright defined it as follows:
“NAR empowers REALTORS® by helping them thrive in their businesses. It achieves this goal by advocating on their behalf, providing market intelligence and research tools, offering professional development and education, maintaining high standards, and elevating the REALTOR® brand. By supporting REALTORS®, NAR protects and advances the right of Americans to own real estate.”
She described this statement as the foundation for NAR’s transformation, reinforcing that every effort, from advocacy and education to brand visibility, should contribute to member success.
Advocacy is one of NAR’s strengths, after all. Education, on the other hand, has not been. And Byron was very clear on that point:
“These are things NR does poorly right now: education, professional development. These are some of the weakest tools in the tool belt for NAR, [with] education at the top of the list of what they do worst… Obviously, spending marketing money, you might argue, is a little worse than that.
“So, the value proposition going into these next three years, 2026 through 2028, to me seems weak…. ‘It achieves its goal by advocating on their behalf.’ Okay, that’s one statement about advocacy. The whole sentence, the whole description here, should be working with DC and others to really help Americans own real estate, which is how they ended. But everything else was about…things that they don’t do well.”
Key Projects in the Strategic Plan
To bring this new value proposition to life, Wright outlined several major initiatives that will modernize NAR’s operations and improve the member experience:
- Overhauling financial systems to strengthen audits, improve efficiency, and increase transparency.
- Managing legal risks to safeguard the association and its members.
- Modernizing legacy systems through AI and advanced technology in budgeting, contracting, operations, and member support.
- Elevating the REALTOR® brand through storytelling, social media expansion, and a complete overhaul of the NAR consumer ad campaign.
- Refreshing the new member onboarding experience to ensure engagement from day one.
- Enhancing dynamic dashboards in partnership with RPR to provide real-time, member-exclusive market insights.
Speaking of initiative #4, Byron spoke plainly:
“I got to tell you, this one hurts because they obviously haven’t listened out of those 100,000 that they got feedback from, from anybody who knows what the hell they are talking about.
“If this is on the agenda of things to do, elevating the Realtor brand value visibility through social media, you’re horrific at this. And we have decades, decades of evidence of the Realtor brand being nonrelevant to consumers. They don’t know what it is. And by the way, they don’t care about what it is. You haven’t achieved this goal. You tried in the 80s. You tried in the ’90s. You tried in the 2000s and the 2010s. And you’re still today clinging on to this hope that one day somebody will know the difference between Realtor and real estate agent, or if they’ll even know to call it real-a-tor or real-tor. They don’t know. They won’t know. And you can keep pounding tens and tens of millions of dollars into this initiative every single year because it’s an ego play. That’s what it is. It’s an ego play from the NAR board that wants to see their brand like anybody else wants to see their brand. This is how they’ve built their businesses: splash their brand on a coffee mug. Put it on a recipe. Put it on the placemat at the local restaurant. Put it on the billboard. Let’s do the same thing with Realtor and force feed it into the minds of the consumers that, ‘Yeah, you should know the difference. And there is one.’
“It hasn’t worked…and this being a continuation of an old plan tells me there are some real flaws in how they’re moving forward with this new strategic plan here today.”
Increasing Fiscal Transparency
Wright also announced a first for the association: the release of a 2025 Annual Report.
According to the letter, this annual report will add context to NAR’s 2024 Form 990 filing, include operational details from 2025, and outline goals for 2026.
That 990 filing is the very same tax document we’ve shared in previous updates on NAR’s budgeting priorities.
Wright said the new report will represent “a new level of transparency for NAR,” offering members and the public valuable insight into how the association operates and allocates resources.
While it won’t resemble a corporate financial statement, it will reflect what Wright called “the highest levels of financial diligence.”
Byron and Nicole both had good things to say about this initiative, with Nicole suggesting NAR leadership might have listened to Byron’s last review of executive salaries and marketing spend.
“They’re now feeling that they have to defend their numbers.”
Byron added,
“That’s what they’re going to try to do. They’re going to do spin control…Well, the 990 just tells us what the numbers are straight up…but I love that they’re doing it. I’ll take the spin.”
Continuing the Work of Transformation
Wright described NAR’s ongoing transformation as a shared responsibility between leadership and its members. The combination of the Strategic Plan and the Annual Report will, she said, “provide an unprecedented level of transparency into how the association is currently situated and where it’s going.”
She ended her letter by thanking members who have already shared their ideas, feedback, and critiques, encouraging continued participation from those who haven’t.
“Our greatest strength is our members. If we continue to work together, we will build an association that reflects the professionalism, resilience, and leadership that real estate professionals who are REALTORS® bring to our communities.”
Can we hope that Wright’s final invitation to participation from members they haven’t heard from yet could lead to an unfiltered BAM interview like the one Byron hosted for Kevin Sears?
We can and we will.
Whether any of these proposed changes meet member expectations will depend on execution, but Wright’s message suggests an organization aware of its past challenges and determined to redefine its future (or at least appear to do so). Time will tell.
