Commercial

Wednesday, February 15 is REALTOR® Day on the Hill. You won't want to miss this important chance to talk directly with your legislators on issues that affect your business. Stick around for the Housing Policy Forum later in the afternoon, then make your way to the Jefferson for our can't-miss Legislative Reception.

On Wednesday, the annual Political Advocacy Luncheon with special guest speaker David Stevens, who is current CEO of the Mortgage Bankers Association and former Federal Housing Administration commissioner. Following lunch, nationally syndicated Washington Post real estate columnist Ken Harney will emcee a special housing policy forum for Virginia REALTORS. Panelists for that forum include Mr. Stevens, National Association of REALTORS’ past president Ron Phipps, and George Mason University economist and Housing Wire contributor Dr. Anthony Sanders. Then, following the panel, we’ll host our 2012 Legislative Reception at the Jefferson Hotel. 

VAR’s legislative package this year comes from three main sources:

The Virginia Association of Realtors is pleased to announce the addition of commercial forms to its Forms Center! Through a licensing agreement with Central Virginia Regional MLS, VAR will now provide the following forms:

• Commercial Purchase Agreement – Form 700;
• Commercial Listing Agreement – Form 710;
• Commercial Letter of Intent for Purchase – Form 720; and
• Commercial Letter of Intent for Lease – Form 730.

We offer these forms as a resource that will improve basic commercial deals by providing you a template for structuring and moving forward in these transactions.

The 2011 Session of the General Assembly, like every other session, produced many changes in Virginia law. Most of these will take effect on July 1. VAR’s legislative team was able to secure many changes during this year’s General Assembly session that will have a profound effect on your real estate business.

CoStar Group, a Washington D.C.-based commercial real estate research firm, is set to acquire LoopNet, a San Francisco-based commercial real estate marketing firm for $860 million. CoStar operates the largest commercial real estate marketing database, with this merger potentially boosting CoStar's subscribers to 160,000 and putting its active listings at 2 million. LoopNet.com is the largest and most heavily trafficked commercial marketplace, with 4.8 million registered members. The deal is expected to close by the end of 2011. First quarter earnings put the combined revenue projections at approximately $321 million annually.

The Virginia Association of REALTORS^® wants to serve you better. To do that, we need to know what we do that works, what we do that doesn’t, and what else we should be doing.  Further, we want to know how you feel about important services and representation VAR provides that you can’t get somewhere else.

To do that, we’ve created this survey. Please help us by taking a few minutes (actually, more like 10-15 minutes!) to fill it out.

And here are the incentives: