CREA is one part of a community that serves the interests of REALTORS®
This is the third Annual Report since CREA, your national association, started producing them in 2013. It is our opportunity and responsibility to share with members the achievements and challenges of the past year. And, importantly, to engage and communicate with members on an ongoing basis.
In many ways, our growing realization over the past few years – that direct communications with REALTORS® was one of our most critical responsibilities – came to a natural culmination at the beginning of 2014 when a major strategic planning exercise brought real clarity to the question of who CREA exists to serve. In the past, there has been a healthy debate about this. Was CREA here to serve the needs of provincial-territorial Associations and local and regional Boards? Or were we here to serve REALTORS®?
One of the most inclusive strategic planning processes we have ever undertaken answered that question conclusively. The full consensus of the people we drew together (CREA leadership, representatives of Boards and Associations from across the country, and others) was that our fundamental role was to serve the interests of REALTORS®. This is not to say that Boards and Associations will now be ignored. In fact, quite the contrary. An essential conclusion of our new strategic plan is that CREA is part of a large multi-stakeholder community. And that community, avoiding any concept of traditional hierarchy or three-level structure, collectively serves the needs of its dues-paying members.
CREA is part of a large multi-stakeholder community. And that community, avoiding any concept of traditional hierarchy or three-level structure, collectively serves the needs of its dues-paying members.
This conclusion left us with two immutable realities.
The first is that it is entirely appropriate for CREA – indeed, it is our mission – to communicate directly with our members, to constantly survey their business needs and create new products and services to meet those needs, and to represent the interests of REALTORS® to a broad array of other audiences, including the home-buying-and-selling public, the federal government, regulatory agencies and the media.
But the second reality is that CREA is not in this on its own. We have an obligation and a responsibility as one of the institutions supported by dues-paying REALTORS® to work in a more coherent and collaborative fashion with our partners in this community. I invite you to check out the plan that will guide our activities in the next three to five years.
Task force to find collaborative ways to promote REALTOR® value
A good example of this, and one around which we have already created a task force, is the whole question of who and how best to communicate to consumers the value of using REALTORS®. We know that everyone in the REALTOR® community spends a lot of time promoting REALTOR® value. But the way in which it is done is erratic and inconsistent, and the sum of the parts is probably a whole lot less than it could or should be. So our task force has a mandate to look at how folks everywhere are going about communicating REALTOR® value. And are there ways in which we can collectively do a better job?
MLS Home Price Index® now available to smaller Boards
We're doing the same thing with the MLS® Home Price Index. When we rolled it out, there were a limited number of Boards and Associations that were able to participate in it. This has been amended, and the HPI is now available to all interested Boards.. The MLS® Home Price Index is a huge market differentiator for REALTORS®. It is, without question, the most methodologically accurate tool of its kind anywhere in the world. And only REALTORS® can provide that information to home buyers and sellers in Canada.
Whether it's promoting REALTOR® value more effectively and efficiently or putting world-class marketing and technology tools at members' fingertips, our goal in all of our activities is embodied in CREA's vision that "REALTORS® are the chosen, trusted and respected experts for consumer real estate needs." And the achievement of that vision can only be accomplished by securing alignment and collaboration amongst the community of REALTOR® associations.
