The chief executive of the National Association of Realtors resigned two days after a federal jury ruled that the powerful organization had conspired to inflate real estate commissions.
Bob Goldberg’s resignation was announced at a closed staff meeting as executives struggled to deal with the outcry that followed the fallout from the court ruling. NAR and several brokerage firms were ordered to pay at least $1.8 billion in damages to home sellers who said they were forced to pay excessive fees to real estate agents. NAR said it plans to appeal.
Mr. Goldberg, 66, was a longtime NAR employee who first joined the organization in 1995 and has served as board chairman since 2017. He had previously planned to retire at the end of 2024, but has faced calls for his immediate resignation since August. when The New York Times published an article showing that the organization was filled with complaints of harassment and discrimination from several women. Some brokers said he failed to address complaints for years.
The sudden exit had nothing to do with the organization’s legal problems or sexual harassment allegations, Mantill Williams, a spokesman for NAR, said in a telephone interview Thursday.
In a statement distributed by the organization, Mr. Goldberg said: “After announcing my decision to retire earlier this year and reflecting on my 30 years with NAR, I came to the conclusion last month that now The time is right for this extraordinary organization.” look to the future.”
Nykia Wright, 44, a former executive director of the Chicago Sun-Times who has been instrumental in driving that publication’s digital strategy, will take over Mr. Goldberg’s role as interim executive director. She is an outsider to the industry and does not have a real estate license. She was not immediately available for comment.
The National Association of Realtors, the largest professional organization in the United States, wields immense power over the U.S. housing industry and even trademarks the word “Realtor.” To gain access to almost all American real estate listings and to be able to call themselves brokers, the 1.5 million members each pay hundreds of dollars in annual fees. NAR is a nonprofit organization with more than $1 billion in assets and also operates RPAC, a political action committee that is the nation’s leading political fundraising organization, according to Open Secrets. In the 2022 election cycle, the committee raised more than $80 million for Democratic and Republican candidates.
But some realtors and homeowners have questioned the organization’s control over the industry – a monopoly that is at the heart of the antitrust lawsuit that home sellers have filed in U.S. District Court in Missouri. In a landmark ruling, a jury concluded that NAR and several major brokerage firms conspired to enforce a NAR rule requiring home sellers to pay commissions to the agent representing the buyer, which resulted in sellers in their opinion paid excessive fees. The decision has the potential to redefine the entire structure of the real estate industry in the United States and reduce the cost of moving homes through lower commissions.
Mr. Goldberg’s resignation marks another major leadership change. Kenny Parcell, the former NAR president and at the center of many allegations, resigned two days after the Times’ revelation.
Several women said they were harassed or subjected to inappropriate behavior by Mr. Parcell and other executives at NAR, according to interviews, a lawsuit and an internal report. Mr. Parcell, 50, denied the allegations in written responses to The Times and continued to deny them even after he resigned.
Real estate agents used online forums to criticize the organization, often blaming Mr. Goldberg directly. One agent, Jason Haber, created an online petition calling on Mr. Goldberg to resign from his post. (Tax returns show his annual salary was more than $2.5 million.) The petition currently has more than 1,000 signatures; others submitted an anonymous letter in September urging him to leave.
Mr. Haber, a real estate agent at Compass, and Danielle Garofalo, a marketing and branding consultant, founded the NAR Accountability Project, which began making several demands on the organization this summer. This included the resignations of Mr. Goldberg and Mr. Parcell. The project’s final demand is that the many women who signed nondisclosure agreements after reporting sexual harassment in the organization be released from those agreements; Ms. Garofalo said in a telephone interview Thursday that she was now confident the organization would respond to that call as well.
“In recent weeks we have seen the worst of NAR, and now we hope the new executive director can make the best of it,” Ms. Garofalo said. “We are hopeful. This is about the women – all these victims of sexual harassment. Our goal was to hear them feel a sense of relief.”
For the women who have spoken out about the organization’s history of sexual harassment, the decision to speak out about Ms. Wright was a step in the right direction.
“This announcement gives me hope,” said Jennifer Braun, senior events producer at NAR, who spoke out in an interview with The Times in August, describing several unpleasant, sexually harassing encounters she had experienced with Mr. Parcell at work.
“We brought about change by stepping forward. I feel like some good decisions are finally being made that will help us move forward,” she said.