The Results of Belarusians' Participation in the Greatest Global Real Estate Conference in Boston, USA
The Belarusian delegation of REALTING participated in one of the most significant and important events for professionals of the global real estate market in 2018 The REALTORS® Conference & Expo.
Conference & Expo is an annual event organized by the US National Association of Realtors (NAR) which includes more than 1.4 million realtors worldwide. The Boston Convention & Exhibition Centre, Boston, Massachusetts, USA, was chosen as a hosting place for the Conference.
More than 400 companies were present at the conference with representatives of different business areas which are one way or another related with the real estate market. More than 20,000 people from 160 countries attended the conference.
REALTORS® Conference & Expo consisted of more than 20 thousands square meters of exhibition stands for companies.
Over the 5 days more than 100 training sessions were available and it included several international gala-dinners organized specifically to strengthen networking for international guests.
The Inauguration of a new president of NAR, the general session of NAR in the frame of which many important international agreements were concluded, awards to the best US realtors and much more.
Results and forecasts for the real estate market
During the first Conference day Lawrence Yun, the NAR Chief Economist, was speaking as a headliner and talked about the US residential property market prognosis for the upcoming year. Mr. Yun noticed that actual market data favored the price growth for the next year, though current residential property sales are expected to be lower if compared to the past year or two. Yun said “2017 was the best period for property sale within a decade”
At the Update: The Top Ten Impacts on Real Estate 2018-2019 session the following burning issues of the global real estate market were raised: interest rates and economy, politics and political uncertainty, housing availability, demographic changes and generation changes, e-commerce and logistics, infrastructure, breakthrough technologies, natural disasters and climate change, immigration, energetics and water issues.
The list contains the most relevant trends and tasks to influence the residential and commercial real estate market in the coming years. “Property issues affect each American from any part of the country and lifestyle,” said Hugh Kelly, an expert from Hugh F. Kelly Real Estate Economics, “Challenges that faces real estate sphere are our common challenges.”
Photos: Belarusian delegation together with the heads of realtors associations of South Korea and Republic of South Africa
Calculation the number of association members and the Technological level
NAR Treasurer Tom Riley told the participants that at the moment the contributions of NAR members will remain at their current level $120 per year, as well as an additional fee of $35 for NAR advertising campaign, which will end in 2019. Riley explained that the association would not need to increase contributions due to the growing membership of about 67,000 new members joined with the last year. However, increasing inflation and other economic factors may still require a rise in the near future, which will be the first increase in contributions since 2012.
On the photo: Alexandr Martynenko (Realting.com) with the heads of realtors associations and FIABCI of Russia, Georgia and the Ukraine
Was appointed to the post a new president of NAR
Another important step in the development of the real estate industry which is based on the example of the United States : now governmental and local realtor associations will have access to the Docusign digital transaction platform, and it will help transfer into Internet and digitalize many steps of property sales process including document preparation and signing. This news excellently shows a modern trend when realtors activity transfer into Internet and general intensification of information technologies influence upon the area.
Zachary Wright assumed the office of the new president of NAR 2019 at the inauguration. The ceremony was held in the presence of more than 3,000 international guests from 160 countries. The immense beauty and scale of the event have emphasized at their best the status and prestige of the realtors job in the modern world.
The Belarusian delegation was one of the honored guests being represented by Pavel Kuznetsov, Chairman of Board of Directors of Property Centre “PAKODAN”; BelAN Council Member, BelAN Committee Head on International Affairs; NAR (USA) Member, Svetlana Kuznetsova, Deputy Director General of “PAKODAN” Property Centre; NAR (USA) Member, as well as Alexandr Martynenko, Co-founder, Director General of Realt.by & Chairman of Realting.com, Alena Vysotskaya, PR and Marketing Director of Realting.com, and Darren Booth, International Sales and Marketing Director of Realting.com.
Dubai Land Department (DLD) ¸ Dubai, the United Arab Emirates, was one of the key strategic global partners of the American 2018 REALTORS Conference & Expo (NAR).
Sultan Butti bin Meyren, DLD Director General, noticed, “Our participation in this important international event demonstrates the successful experience of real estate partnerships at the global level. Being a strategic global partner of NAR is an ideal opportunity to showcase our experience and share it with international delegations. DLD is on the list of NAR global partners that includes 100 training sessions with more than 150 speakers who will speak on various real estate market aspects.”
The Belarusian delegation was also successful in working at the conference. Important agreements were signed between BelAN and the Association of Realtors of Poland. Belarus was represented at the international day as part of NAR International and presented important technology for the sale of real estate around the world which is currently being developed by the Realting.com team.
On the photo: Alexandr Martynenko (Realting.com) and Joe Schneider (International Director NAR)
Impressions of the participants of the Belorussian delegation
— For the last 20 years of working in real estate area I have visited a huge number of exhibitions and conferences in different countries. Here in Boston we were impressed by the scale and level of Conference & Expo organization. The fact that such a great event is held every year arouses great respect for the organizers.
The new NAR president inauguration ceremony for 2019 was really impressive. It’s a tradition for NAR to elect a new president every year. Annual election of a new leader is an indicator of the democracy and shows openness of the organization.
A lot of CRM and MLS systems and new technologies for realtors were presented at the Conference. It is interesting to note that Realting.com technology arouse considerable interest, especially among European realtors, and I would merrily note that some American colleagues have shown desire to join the platform despite an enormous number already existing MLS systems in the country.
As for the American MLS systems presented at the conference (there are more than 600 of them in the USA), among those with whom we managed to communicate and look more closely from the inside, we saw that MLS Realt.by is ahead of the American ones in certain functional and design parts. This also underlines the interest of American colleagues in Belarusian developments.
Naturally, we will continue to work and develop our product. Maybe in the future, the Belarusian development will be able to conquer not only the domestic and European, but also the global real estate market.
— According to the results of the conference, we can surely say that the modern real estate market will be developed by means of the latest innovative technologies. From 400 stands of companies which were present at the Conference, around 70% were MLS, CRM systems, information portals and other technological products. This points to the fact that successful work in the real estate market will be tightly connected with information technologies for the upcoming decade.
One of the most significant achievements of the Realting.com team at the Conference, I think, is a huge number of cooperation agreements with potential partners. During the presentation of Belarus at the stand of NAR International, we noticed a lot of interest towards our international property trade technology from overseas realtors
There were four of us who worked at the stand, and didn’t physically have time to communicate with everyone who showed interest in us, sometimes we had to just manage to exchange business cards. Hundreds of realtors are interested in our technology.
What does it mean? It means that Realting.com is developing in the right way, and technologies which are developed by our team are the top trend. Its good news. And it once again confirms that Belarus is really one of the world Mecca of information technologies.
— We have organized a long trip to the USA to promote Realting.com. We took part in the conference in Boston, met leader companies of real estate market from Las Vegas, Los Angeles and San Diego. After the trip I feel very optimistic due to the amount of interest shown by overseas clients and partners from many countries.
The most positive aspect of our negotiations is the fact that realtors from different countries are ready to share up to 50% of their affiliate commissions with partner agencies in order to get the client from abroad.
In 2019 the Realting platform with the technology it implements has all chances to occupy serious positions in the global real estate market.
— It was very interesting to exchange experience with Eastern European colleagues on the functioning of the real estate services market and the real estate market in general in neighboring countries.
I’d like to notice that Belarus looks very positive among them. It was clearly visible at the meeting on global issues of real estate market functioning. Following my report, it became obvious that our real estate market, though sometimes problematic, is far more civilized if compared to other countries.
Year 2019 is declared as a year of educating for Belarusian realtors. It was very interesting to face with a vast number of online-services used by US realtors in their day-to-day work. Some interesting developments are planned to be introduced here in Belarus on the basis of the Union on Re-engineering of Realtor Activity.
Finally, we have signed an agreement with the Polish Association of real estate experts. Now Belarusians are at leading positions among aliens buying property in Poland, and signing this cooperation agreement was quite a logical step.
— Following the results of our meetings we have reached the agreement on the establishment of Eastern Europe Realtor Training Centre in Belarus where time-tested training programs translated into Russian will be taught. We will also invite American teachers to teach some courses.
Surely, some programs will need adapting, and new programs will require translation into Russian. We are planning to present first programs and workshops in May 2019. The School of Realtor Skills that I’m heading begins preparation for this event.
