During a lively 95th annual meeting of the Westchester Putnam Association of Realtors Inc. last week, the trade group secured a majority vote for a proposed merger with the Rockland County Board of Realtors and the Orange County Association of Realtors Inc. effective Jan. 1, 2012.
On Oct. 26, the Rockland association voted in favor of the merger; the Orange County association will vote on Wed., Nov. 2.
“Mergers will be the future in this country,” said Nancy Kennedy, president-elect of WPAR. “Realtor memberships are shrinking.”
Through the merger, the Orange and Rockland groups would dissolve into the Westchester Putnam Association, which would immediately seek a name change to Hudson Gateway Association of Realtors Inc., bringing the group total to 9,500 members.
“We”™re basically taking the boards of directors of all three associations and making one large board of directors, something like 45 people,” said outgoing WPAR CEO P. Gilbert Mercurio, who will be succeeded by Richard Haggerty. “The year after that, it gets pared down by about eight or nine people from three associations”¦ it”™s complicated, but orderly, and by 2015, we ought to be thinking and acting like a region and our current structure will be no more.”
The ultimate goal will be to merge also the WPAR”™s Empire Access Multiple Listing Service and the Greater Hudson Valley Multiple Listing Service upon contractual termination in two years.
Mercurio said the association would maintain its White Plains headquarters with offices in Goshen, Putnam County and in West Nyack or Pearl River in Rockland County.
Beyond changes that will affect the association in terms of governance, the National Association of Realtors has increased its dues by $40; the total invoice cost to association members will range from $420 to $458.
