HAR CEO Bob Hale marks 50 years of transforming homebuying in Houston
Bob Hale has made the process of buying or selling a home a little easier for countless Houstonians.
The president and CEO of the Houston Association of Realtors for the past 35 years is widely regarded as a visionary in the industry, having been named among Realtor Magazine’s 25 most influential people in the industry in 2003 and 2006. He helped make the local association’s website, HAR.com, a household name. And he’s marking his 50th year with the 46,000-member organization of real estate professionals.
A graduate of the University of Texas Law School, Hale worked part time during law school for a lobbyist who was also an attorney. He joined the Texas Association of Realtors in Austin in 1970 as its government affairs director. In 1973, prominent Houston Realtors Julio Laguarta and Howard Horne persuaded him to work with HAR as an attorney and outside lobbyist. He was named CEO in 1988.
An early adopter of technology, Hale attended a Texas Society of Association Executives technology conference in 1996 where a speaker made an impression on him: “Your internet presence in the future will be more important to you than your physical presence as a business.”
“Over 6 million times, consumers go to HAR.com compared to no consumers going to our physical location, and we’re working mostly remote right now,” Hale said. “He was right.”
The Chronicle talked with Hale about his career and his five decades with HAR. The responses have been edited for length and clarity.
Q: How has the process of buying and selling homes changed since 1988?
A: There was a time when all the listings were in an MLS book. The agent had access to the book. And so a consumer would have to visualize what kind of home do I want and where do I want it. They couldn’t see it. They had to imagine it in their mind. They would explain to the agent, here’s what I’m looking for, and then the agent would have to figure out what homes met that criteria. And then the agent would drive the consumer around showing them properties.
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Today, it’s totally the opposite. The consumer goes to a portal like HAR.com or Zillow or realtor.com, and they find often times the exact home they want to buy and then call the agent and ask them to show it to them. So, it’s totally flipped from the agent having access to the data to now the consumer has access to the data. That’s benefited two people. It’s benefited the consumer because they have access to everything that’s available. And the agent because it saves them a tremendous amount of time.
Q: What innovations or services did you develop that helped home buyers?
A: In 1997, HAR launched HAR.com, which last year the agent listings were viewed 547 million times by consumers. The second thing is HAR developed an agent rating that allowed customers to rate their agents. We’ve had over 300,000 clients complete a survey.
HAR developed ShowingSmart, which allows consumers to easily allow the showing of their home for sale or to see a home. It was created last year. Almost 2 million showings have been facilitated by that system.
We just launched Audio Narrative, which allows consumers on the site who are visually impaired or who don’t read English to listen to a listing description in 12 languages.
Q: What technology did you implement during COVID?
A: HAR created a virtual showing tool where agents could have an open house virtually. We surveyed members, and on average, five customers will attend an in-person open house, while as many as 100 will attend virtually. Those 100 may include someone in Saudi Arabia or London who is being transferred to Houston. We’ve had over 26,000 consumers view our virtual open houses.
Q: How does HAR compare to other Realtor organizations?
A: We’re the largest trade association in Houston. We’re the second largest Realtor association in the country. Miami is No. 1. We’re extremely innovative. We’re willing to take chances, willing to make mistakes. That’s what makes us different than others.
Q: What kind of chances?
A: We launched a product a while back called Realtor Match. It allowed consumers to search for agents based upon how much business they had done. So the staff created the product, met with the board of directors, voted unanimously to approve and adopt it, and the membership revolted. I’ve never seen members so mad. And so, being the very brave soul I am, I stood my ground and we kept it live for almost a day. But we were still named the Inman News Innovator of the Year. We got the award because we took a chance. We did what we thought we should do. If you don’t take chance, you never do anything.
Q: What’s the biggest challenge facing Realtors today?
A: Financially, it would be a lack of inventory and high interest rates. The problem is if I have a 2 or 3 percent interest rate, I may not sell my home unless I need to because my rates could be 6 or 7 percent. The seller doesn’t want to sell and the buyer wants to wait until the rates go down. I remember when I bought a home for 12 percent. I thought I did fantastic. That was the early ’80s. Rates had gone to nearly 18 percent.
