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Hi, I'm Leigh Rutledge and I'm a past president here at the Sacramento Association of REALTORS®
I've also chaired our Political Action Committee here and I wanted to take a minute to talk to you about the REALTOR® Action
Fund. I want to start it off by quoting a past president of the California Association of REALTORS®
Her name is Ann Pettijohn, and she used to say "get into politics or get out of real estate"
And I always really appreciated that quote because like it or not, we are very involved in politics
if you are in the real estate business.
We have to preserve private property rights every day and there's are always, always politically motivated issues
surrounding our business. So unfortunately, like it or not, we are in politics.
And when you make a contribution and an investment into the REALTOR® Action Fund, your money goes all the way up the chain
regarding your REALTOR® life. You start off your a Member of the Sacramento Association of REALTORS®
and by virtue of that you're a Member of the California Association of REALTORS® and the National Association of REALTORS®
Now you probably all know that. So when you do make your investment, the money is spent federally, at a state level,
and at a local level. Really quickly, three very quick examples of where your money goes and what it goes to fight.
Everyone is well aware on a Federal level we are continually fighting to keep mortgage deductibility.
That is a huge Federal issue and there is always dollars spent there.
On a state level, there are retrofit, point of sale retrofit issues all the time.
From water issues, they are a huge, huge issues in the state of California
to energy audits, the list goes on and on. And what I mean by point of sale is when we go to sell a home
if there is a point of sale mandate on that property, whatever the issue is has to be done before that home can close escrow.
And we at the Association do not believe that is an effective way to do it or really the right way to do it.
If it is a policy that is good for the state of California, it should be good for everybody and not just those
few people that happen to sale their home every year.
Now on a local level, and this is just one little example of what can happen locally.
A few years ago, as you know, working in the Sacramento area in Sacramento County, there are many cities within Sac County
The City of Sacramento, the City of Elk Grove, the City of Citrus Heights, the City of Rancho Cordova and a few ago there was
an idea being floated around out there about charging REALTORS® a business license fee for every city within which they worked.
So as an example, if you lived in the City of Sacramento and you are going to list and sell a home in the city of Citrus
Heights, just to use as an example, you would have to have a business license in the City of Citrus Heights even to the point
where you are having an open house and the open house signs that you use you would have to have a sticker on every single
open house sign that showed you had a business license, if not code enforcement could come along confiscate your
sign and fine you. That conversation was going on a few years ago and we stopped it here at the
Sacramento Association of REALTORS®. That's just one little example of how our business everyday would have been
effected with additional fees and cost.
So please, please contribute whatever you can and invest in the REALTOR® Action Fund. It is an investment.
It is an investment in your future as a REALTOR® and anything you can do to help invest in that fund we
really, really, really appreciate.
Thank you very much, thanks for listening, and thanks for your time