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Jason Haber has had a busy year.
Haber is a working Compass broker in New York City, but he catapulted onto the radars of people far from home back in early 2024. That’s when, along with The Agency founder Mauricio Umansky, he launched the American Real Estate Association. The group emerged amid a period of frustration with the National Association of Realtors and has sought a similar advocacy role in the industry.
Since its launch just over a year ago, the American Real Estate Association has racked up a series of notable accomplishments. Last August, it debuted a membership program. This January, it absorbed the New York Residential Agent Continuum (NYRAC), and this week it debuted a proposal meant to bring a resolution to industry fighting over NAR’s Clear Cooperation Policy.
READ MORE ABOUT AREA’S ‘CLEAR COLLABORATION POLICY’
Against that backdrop, Inman reached out to Haber to talk about the issues he sees dominating real estate right now. And Haber immediately pointed to one thing: trust. His point was that agents are not widely trusted, and that needs to change. Haber has thoughts on how to do that, pointing specifically to better industry credentialing. He also shared an update on the American Real Estate Association, which is now in the process of talking to potential sponsors.
What follows is a version of Inman’s conversation with Haber that has been edited for length and clarity.
Inman: Talk to me about the biggest issues facing the industry right now. What’s constantly on your mind?
Jason Haber: What’s constantly on my mind is trust with the consumer. What really troubles me is that when you look at public opinion polls, the real estate agent on that list is generally under the used car salesman. I think it’s a crime.
I think it’s a shame and I think we have to change it. Part of the problem is that I feel like the public often misunderstands what we do. The way the public sees real estate agents is very similar to the way the public sees Congress. They love their Congress member, but they hate Congress.
So people like their real estate agent or tend to, but don’t like the industry. So I think we need to be really smart in thinking about how we present what we do and the value prop to the public. I think that would also help with policymakers, because what’s happened is the industry has become a target.
What are the origins of this distrust?
My own theory is that there are just too many darn agents in this country. There are just too many agents chasing too few deals and the bar to entry has been so low. You’ll hear, when you’re out at night, “oh, maybe I’ll just get my license.” Have you ever heard someone say that about their Series 7 [exam that’s required to become a stock broker]? “I wanna go sell Apple stock. Maybe I’ll just go get my broker dealer license
You’ve never heard that, right? But why is it okay that when it comes to the biggest investment of someone’s life, someone can easily get a license and transact with them? But if someone wants to sell one share of Apple stock, they have to get all this certification. So that’s a big part of the problem, that we’ve encouraged mass licensure. And so when we have the bar that low, we have a lot of non-professionals.
It’s something that we need to change culturally within the industry, but you haven’t heard people talking about this. Obviously NAR benefits f
