RealtyChat.com Blog

Yes, at last! Someone who thinks the way I do about the pronunciation and spelling of REALTOR®! Everytime I see it mispelled, or called Relitee, or reality, or whatever….my hair stands on end. My associates learned this the hard way when they hung their license. They know how to say and spell the word! Other brokerages, well, that’s going to take some work. It surprises me their Brokers, managers, and support staff doesn’t send them back to RE 101.

I cringe when I hear agents mispronounce the word, since they should know better; the general public just hears it mispronounced so much and perpetuates, and you just have to grin and bear that. I’ve never seen it spelled incorrectly. Except that all-caps business. I know it’s what NAR wants. I also think it’s ludicrous. All-caps is hard to read. Words in all caps form a solid block and are hard to read because the individual letters hard to distinguish without the variation in height and width.

Agreed; the registered trademark and the prestige associated with it should not be taken so lightly. Many agents misspell REALTOR® because of typing errors. However, every agent and broker in this industry should know the proper spelling, pronunciation and format for trademark if they are to associate themselves with it.

William
www.4mysales.com

I am happy that we are trying to educate the realty community… I am Vice Chair of new member orientation for the Orange County Association of Realtors. I get to talk to a minimum of 200 new agents every month. Teaching them from the get go… how to pronounce their profession is at the top of my list. At the same time there are agents at this classes who are not new… I know that the name is a TRADEMARK. I am not always able to get the trademark symbol behind the verbiage.We have over 12,000 members in our association, far more agents than is necessary, plus all of the affiliates. It is getting more and more difficult to do business just getting through all of the junk email of everyone trying to sell us everything, especially leads. As a fairly new agent, myself, in the past few years I bought a whole lot of hype that I really didn’t need, and I feel that I helped make everyone money except for myself. We need to keep life more simple and back to basics. Raise the bar on professionalism and be proud of representing our Industry in a professional manner that everyone can be proud of.

I concur with Norm that “Realtor” should be never pronounced “Relator”, especially by the Realtors themselves.

I also know NAR has a lock on this word. But… in places where they can’t reach but English is still spoken, there seems to be a lot of realtors with a small “r” who don’t feel any worse off:
http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/realtor?view=uk

:)

You cringe when you hear agents mispronounce the word or unwittingly abort it when they mispronounce it. Yet some of us realtors are utterly disgusted when we have to dish out $500.00/annum just to use the word itself so as to describe our profession. I just cannot fathom how some group got to trademark a word which defines a profession. A realtor is an individual who acts as an agent for the sale and purchase of buildings and land…an esquire is a title appended to a lawyer’s surname, and not a word legally registered to represent a product. I am a realtor, and yet not a registered Realtor…which one am I?

HA! If someone can’t spell that’s just pathetic but pronouncing “REALTOR” incorrectly just makes me cringe! I remember correcting an agent in my marketplace one day and getting a very nasty look back…even denial that it was said incorrectly. Then she said it again in the next sentence. Geez! I guess I should have corrected her privately.

Its so amazing how many professionals can’t say it correctly. I used to correct my agents all the time, but they just refused to listen. I cringed everytime they picked up the phone and said “reality” or “re-la-tor”.

And it was also a pet peeve of mine when “agents” would call themselves brokers. As a broker, I think this is a total misrepresentation of the agent’s authority. Has anyone else dealt with this?

-Sunny
http:/www.GardenStateApartments.com

What has happened to the Arizona market. Seems it boomed and everyone got on the bandwagon. Now there are too many houses and too few buyers. Do you feel the same? please email your response to me at mike.clemans@verizon.net.