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He was a stunt diver. Now he’s the head of a national realtor group.
Kevin Sears of Springfield, president of the National Association of Realtors, is making housing construction one of the organization's top priorities.
In the early ’90s, the new president of the National Association of Realtors was a stunt and high-diver at Riverside Park (now Six Flags New England) in Agawam.
The job occasionally included being lit on fire.
Now he has taken the helm at an organization that has been the subject of a lawsuit over commission structures, faced allegations of sexual harassment, and saw its last president abruptly resign over threats to reveal personal information.
From the diving board to the realtor board
Kevin Sears competed in diving at Providence College and coached for two years immediately after graduating before becoming a realtor in 1994. Having served on dozens of committees on local, state, and national levels, he was surprised but ready to serve when former president Tracy Kasper suddenly stepped down on Jan. 8 after only months at the helm.
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Sears works with his siblings at Sears Real Estate in Springfield, the brokerage his father started in 1971. The day he got his license to sell real estate in 1994, his father instructed him to join the local board of realtors. He immediately volunteered on three committees.
“It’s been a tremendous blessing for myself, my family, and my business,” he said. “I’ve long advocated whether it’s at city halls, on Beacon Hill, or Washington, D.C., for Americans’ abilities to be able to buy, sell, lease, or transfer real property, and I believe it’s a sacred thing in the United States.
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“That’s one reason why we are the envy of the world.”
More on the housing market
One of top his priorities is to get more housing built in Massachusetts, in the rest of the country.
“When’s the best time to plant a tree? Twenty years ago,” he said. “When is the second-best time? Today. We need to have the conversations with our elected officials, with our regulators, about promoting housing, the building of new units in Massachusetts, especially multifamily housing near the MBTA stations. We should have done this 20 years ago, but we can still start today.”
Righting the ship
In late October, a judge awarded $1.78 billion in damages to the plaintiffs in a class-action lawsuit against the NAR. The association is appealing the verdict.
Sears said he disagrees strongly with the verdict, but the 1989 state champion diver and lifelong sports fan said, when confronted with difficult realities, realtors should take a cue from athletes: “Focus on the basics” and “Do your job.”
“What realtors need to do when they’re having meetings with people, hoping to turn them into clients, is they should clearly talk about how they get paid,” Sears said.
Sears and the NAR are lobbying elected officials in Washington, D.C., to make exceptions to the capital gains tax for small landlords, looking to incentivize them to sell. This would release more inventory into the market.
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They’re also lobbying congress to reauthorize the National Flood Insurance Program, which is set to expire March 9, and want Massachusetts to require agents to undergo two hours of Fair Housing training.
More than anything, he said, he wants to make sure individual realtors are successful in addressing clients’ real estate needs.
“The typical residential real estate transaction adds $199,800 in economic activity into the local community and to the Commonwealth,” he said. “In 2022, it was over $110 billion, or 16.3 percent of the gross state product.
“Housing is so fundamental to the success of an economy, so if we can get more people into housing, it’s going to be good for the economy.”
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