The Moment I Realized I Wanted Nothing To Do With NAR

Ever have a moment that flips your whole perspective in an instant? For me, it was watching a fellow Realtor get dragged through the mud for his faith. Not for something he did wrong in real estate, but for what he believed outside of it. That’s when it hit me: silence makes us complicit. And that was the moment I knew I couldn’t be part of the National Association of Realtors anymore.

There are a lot of reasons I don’t want to be affiliated with the National Association of Realtors anymore, but one story in particular sealed the deal for me.

It wasn’t something I read in a headline or heard at a conference. It was a short, easily missed news clip shared by another realtor in a text about a small-town Montana pastor and part-time realtor named Brandon Huber. I couldn’t believe what I was reading. It was like the floor fell out from under me. The Missoula Organization of Realtors was persecuting a Christian pastor for his faith.

He wasn’t accused of lying to a client or mishandling money. He wasn’t caught doing something shady in real estate. Nope! He was accused of hate speech by the Missoula Organization of Realtors because of something that happened at his church. And the moment I saw that, something in me shifted.

The Backstory

Pastor Brandon Huber, at the time, led Clinton Community Church, a small Christian congregation just outside Missoula. He also happened to be a realtor, a part-time one, just trying to make a living like the rest of us.

His church had been helping hand out free sack lunches through the Missoula Food Bank & Community Center. Then, in June the food bank started adding pride flyers to the lunch bags, flyers celebrating LGBTQ+ pride and inclusion.

Now, to be clear, this wasn’t some angry protest. Pastor Huber didn’t stage a boycott. He simply told the food bank that the flyers conflicted with his church’s biblical doctrine, and that they’d continue serving free lunches, just separately. The church never stopped feeding people. They just did it on their own.

That should’ve been the end of the story. But it wasn’t.

The Complaint

Not long after, an anonymous complaint was filed with the Missoula Organization of Realtors (MOR) accusing Pastor Huber of “hate speech.” The person who filed the complaint wasn’t even a part of the church congregation. A bitter minded person who had some connection to the real estate world to know that the NAR had snuck a new code into their Code of Ethics in 2020 called Standard of Practice 10-5 and the complaint was taken seriously.

That rule expanded the Code of Ethics to say that any “harassing or hate speech” toward protected classes could be punished, not just while conducting real estate business, but even in a realtor’s personal life.

So basically, if you say or believe something outside of work that someone finds offensive, you could face professional consequences.

What He Was Up Against

MOR launched an official ethics case. Pastor Huber faced:

• Possible fines up to $5,000

• Suspension of membership privileges

• Losing access to the MLS, which would have ended his real estate career altogether

He ended up suing MOR and NAR, claiming religious discrimination. He said he was being punished for his faith for acting according to the beliefs of his church.

In 2022, a Montana judge dismissed the case, because the court said it wasn’t “ripe” yet (he was told that he had to finish the Realtor appeals process first).

But the story didn’t die there. It sparked conversation across the state, and eventually led to what some lawmakers called “Brandon’s Law”, a proposal to let agents access the MLS without being forced to join NAR if they had legitimate objections like his. Sadly, the bill didn’t pass.

Why This Hit Me So Hard

When I first saw that story, I couldn’t believe it was real. I started asking other Montana realtors if they’d heard about it and most had no idea what I was talking about.

It barely made the news. A few smaller outlets and bloggers covered it, but it was like someone had quietly swept it under the rug. KPAX did a brief story on it, but if you missed it, the story wasn't talked about again until the judge ruled and that too was brief. They never expanded on any of the pertinent the details. If KPAX had, more people would have known what was going on because it's a widely watched news source. And that’s what got me.

This wasn’t about someone committing a crime or being unethical in their work. It was about a man living out his faith in his church. He was the leader of the church preaching God’s word. He was being persecuted for making an ethical decision that didn't align with worldly views. Romans 12:2 "Do not conform to the pattern of this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind. Then you will be able to test and approve what God's will is - his good, pleasing and perfect will". He was dragged into a professional ethics case for it, all in the rise of woke ideology. It was disgusting.

How is that okay?

It made me question everything about the system we’re part of. How far its reach goes, what it stands for, and who it’s really protecting. Because if an organization can step that far into someone’s personal life, into their church, and call it “hate speech,” that’s not an association I want anything to do with.

My Thoughts

I’m not here to debate theology. I’m not here to tell anyone what to believe. But I am saying this… we should all be free to live by our convictions without worrying that our profession will come after us for it.

That’s where NAR and the local real estate organizations lost me. When personal faith becomes grounds for professional punishment, something is deeply wrong. And the fact that so few people even knew this happened, that it stayed so quiet, makes me wonder if there were bigger forces behind keeping it that way. It definitely deserved more light than it got.

So yeah,  there are a lot of reasons I’ve backed away from the National Association of Realtors. They’ve screwed over their agents who are forced to be members of the association if they want to be successful. The NAR has hurt buyers with changes they’ve made to the rules and so much more that I will talk about.  But this? This was a direct attack on Jesus. This was the one that changed everything for me.

See for yourself… I have attached a link below to all the supporting data of this case. Court documents, MOR grievance form, anonymous letter rant, and Facebook posts: https://reason.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/11/HubervMissoulaRealtors.pdf