Douglas Elliman signs on to American Real Estate Association
Membership in the trade group surges by 66% with the addition; Elliman CEO Michael Liebowitz has joined the ARA management board to help guide its direction.
The American Real Estate Association's ranks are climbing with the addition of high-end real estate brokerage Douglas Elliman.
The association, which is now going by the acronym ARA to avoid confusion with another real estate trade group, is growing by 66% to 16,600 members with the addition of Douglas Elliman's 6,600 agents and brokers.
The trade group expects to soon be at more than 20,000 members, according to co-founder and Compass agent Jason Haber.
"It's a very big honor and a milestone achievement to have Douglas Elliman join the American Real Estate Association," Haber told Real Estate News in a Sept. 18 statement.
"As we transition from an all-volunteer organization to a staffed nonprofit with a singular focus on elevating the real estate industry, having key partners in place is vital for our access."
A new management board: Douglas Elliman President and CEO Michael Liebowitz is the first announced member of ARA's management board, which will be a committee of five to 10 prominent brokerage leaders to guide ARA's direction. Other management board members will be announced later this year.
Many of those leaders will be bulk-enrolling their agents, so ARA expects to grow to 100,000 members by the end of the year, though agents will have the option to opt-out of ARA membership, according to Haber. ARA launched its paid membership program a year ago and almost all of its members have joined at the basic $20 level for 2025.
"We believe in agent choice," Haber said.
Notably, the issue of whether agents and brokers have a choice in joining the National Association of Realtors has been a subject of recent antitrust litigation. Haber has previously said that ARA does not consider NAR a rival and aims to "coexist peacefully" with the much larger-trade group.
Who pays agent dues? "Dues paying, financial commitment, in-kind or other ways they can support our trade group" will be handled by each firm that joins "on a case-by-case basis, depending on their size, scope, etc." Haber said.
ARA has a five-member board of directors that already included Douglas Elliman General Counsel Deva Roberts as well as Haber, American REA co-founder Mauricio Umansky, and two real estate growth company founders.