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 percent 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.