![\"\"](\"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/07\/arkansasLogo.jpg\")
This past spring, when a bill called the \u2018Buyer Beware Act\u2019 was proposed in the Arkansas statehouse, the state REALTOR\u00ae association sprang into action to defend its members and their ability to serve their clients: Arkansas\u2019 home-buying and -selling public. Using the REALTOR\u00ae Party\u2019s Advocacy Everywhere program, it issued a Call for Action that spurred a barrage of opposition messages to state legislators, and the bill was withdrawn in short order.<\/p>\n
Chief Executive Officer Andrea Alford, who, as former director of the state\u2019s Real Estate Commission, brings broad perspective to the issue, explains that HB1905 would have prevented real estate licensees from revealing the current taxable value of a residential property in MLS listings, instead having to direct clients to seek this information from the Office of the County Assessor. \u201cThe legitimate concern was that certain variables like the homestead tax and a tax-freeze benefit for homeowners 65 years and older meant that the tax value for any given property could differ wildly, depending on the owner. These discrepancies could result in \u2018sticker shock\u2019 after closing, and tax assessors would be the ones getting angry calls,\u201d she says, \u201cbut the proposed remedy would have severely restricted transparency on taxable values, and placed unnecessary burdens on agents, their clients, and county assessors. It would have kept our members from fully serving their clients to the best of their ability.\u201d<\/p>\n
The legislation\u2019s sponsor had made some noise about the issue, but was not expected to file a bill, when suddenly \u2013 she did.<\/p>\n
Alford and Arkansas REALTORS\u00ae\u2019 Chief Operating Officer Amy Hair were attending the AE Institute in Denver at the time. Hair notes that they were actually at a dinner when they learned that the issue had been brought to the floor. \u201cWe went to Andrea\u2019s room to put the Advocacy Everywhere application together, and sent it off, just like that.\u201d She explains that because of the state\u2019s alternate-year legislative sessions, the association doesn\u2019t have to issue Calls for Action very often, so they weren\u2019t beginners, but nor were they regulars. \u201cThe process could not be easier: you fill out a form online, saying \u2018here\u2019s the issue, here\u2019s our concern.\u2019 Then you draft your message and hit send!\u201d The call to the membership went out the following day, urging them to contact all state representatives except the sponsors of the bill, who had been carefully blocked by the proprietary software.<\/p>\n
It went out shortly before the following day\u2019s session opened: 10,512 emails and nearly 4,000 text messages to Arkansas REALTORS\u00ae and affiliate members. Within five hours, a whopping 781 people responded by contacting their representatives. \u201cLet\u2019s just say that we received acknowledgment that our work was effective, and the message had reached the lawmakers,\u201d reports Hair.<\/p>\n
After the bill was withdrawn, says Alford, she met with the county assessors to work out how the REALTORS\u00ae could help the existing situation. \u201cThey recognize that REALTORS\u00ae offer a valuable service, providing education to buyers and sellers, so they were very receptive to our outreach. To begin, we\u2019ve invited the Arkansas Assessment Coordination Division and the Arkansas Association of Counties to speak at our upcoming state convention, for the benefit of all our members, and by extension, the industry.\u201d She is excited by the opportunities for consumer education, too, especially with the number of new homebuyers getting into the market. \u201cThis is a public awareness opportunity we didn\u2019t know existed, until the restrictive legislation was threatened, so that is some good that\u2019s come of it. We have a new level of confidence working with members who have access to existing MLS information, and can also help find the actual taxable property values for prospective owners. We\u2019re very grateful that the REALTOR\u00ae Party and its resources helped us get to this point.\u201d<\/p>\n
To learn more about how Arkansas REALTORS\u00ae is protecting transparency in the real estate industry, contact Chief Executive Officer Andrea Alford at andrea@arkansasrealtors<\/a> or 501.225.2020; or Chief Operating Officer Amy Hair at amy@arkansasrealtors.com<\/a> or 501.225.2020.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Calling on the REALTOR\u00ae Party\u2019s Advocacy Everywhere program for a last-minute campaign against a bill restricting transparency on the taxable value of residential properties, Arkansas REALTORS\u00ae managed to apply enough pressure in a five-hour period to result in the bill\u2019s withdrawal.","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":23533,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,33,296],"tags":[655,1480,1482],"class_list":["post-23528","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-about-us","category-success-stories","category-success-story","tag-advocacy-everywhere","tag-arkansas","tag-arkansas-realtors-association"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23528","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=23528"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23528\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23537,"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/23528\/revisions\/23537"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/23533"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=23528"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=23528"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/realtorparty.realtor\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=23528"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}