- NAR spent an unusually low share of its total revenue on employee compensation in 2013 relative to comparable trade groups.
- NAR's highest-paid executive's compensation wasn't out of the ordinary compared to peers.
Some real estate agents recently expressed outrage over the level of compensation earned by National Association of Realtors executives.
But NAR is actually somewhat of a penny-pincher when it comes to shelling out on employees — at least compared to some of the other largest trade groups, according to a review of 2013 tax forms.
NAR spent a smaller share of its revenue on employee compensation in 2013 than all but one of the 10 trade associations examined by Inman, while its CEO, Dale Stinton, earned compensation that’s not out of the ordinary relative to what his peers take home. (Stinton is still NAR’s chief executive.)
View the infographic below for a better sense of how NAR’s spending on employee compensation stacks up against similar trade lobbies, including the American Medical Association, American Bar Association, National Association of Homebuilders and the American Psychological Association.
The National Association of Realtors (NAR) ranked sixth by revenue earned among trade groups examined by Inman, trailing top earner American Chemical Society, followed by the National Education Association, American Medical Association, American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the American Petroleum Institute.
Only the National Education Association has more members than the NAR (about 2 million more), with the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants and the American Bar Association ranking a distant third and fourth.
NAR spent a smaller share of its total revenue on employee compensation (25.44 percent) than all other groups examined besides the American Petroleum Institute (21.77 percent).
The National Association of Homebuilders and Mortgage Bankers Association — the two other largest U.S. housing trade groups — dropped a much larger portion of their revenue on employee compensation in 2013 than NAR: 65.2 percent and 44.29 percent, respectively.
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NAR’s CEO reported earnings totaling $1.54 million in 2013, or 0.8 percent of NAR’s revenue. By dollars earned, that put him roughly in the middle of the pack compared to the other top-paid executives examined by Inman.
