Risks and opportunities. Those two themes dominated the conversation at Broker’s Edge, a one-day event in midtown Manhattan sponsored by the National Association of REALTORS® in conjunction with the New York State Association of REALTORS®.
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| At Broker’s Edge, a one-day conference for brokers in New York, NAR President-elect Elizabeth Mendenhall moderated a panel on the future of real estate featuring, from left, NAR’s incoming CEO Bob Goldberg; Dan Elsea, president of broker services for Real Estate One in Detroit; and Suzanne Mueller, senior vice president of industry relations for Move Inc. |
Among the featured speakers was Tom Ridge, a two-time governor of Pennsylvania and the nation’s first U.S. Secretary of Homeland Security under President George W. Bush. Ridge said that regardless of the size of your company, you need a cybersecurity policy and training on digital hygiene. “If there is a significant loss of information, you will pay for it. Companies have been fined who haven’t even lost information,” he warned.
NAR associate counsel Jessica Edgerton reinforced Ridge’s caution, saying that “cybercrime is rampant, devastating, and hitting our industry hard.”
In a city like New York, where 23 percent of residents are foreign-born, it’s not surprising that one of the key opportunities discussed was the continued influx of global capital, particularly in the states of Arizona, California, Florida, New York, and Texas. China and Canada are the two biggest sources of foreign investors, according to NAR’s 2017 Profile of International Real Estate Activity.
Protect Yourself
NAR provides resources to help brokers keep their data secure, including the video “Window to the Law: Best Practices for Cybercrime Prevention.”
Speaker Angie Lee, principal and managing director for BLOC Residential Corp. and 2017 president of the Asian Real Estate Association of America, said Asians make up most of the legal immigrants to the United States. Most are from China and India, Lee said, and by next year, they’ll bring $1 trillion in buying power.
The Broker’s Edge event reflects NAR’s continuing commitment to serve its broker members through resources and professional development. Learn more at nar.realtor/brokers. In addition, articles from a wide range of broker perspectives are available through REALTOR® Magazine’s Broker-to-Broker initiative. (You can also find a chronological list of Broker-to-Broker articles.)
—REALTOR® Magazine
