President’s Message – January 2020

By Sandy Jamison

Happy New Year and welcome to the new 20’s.  I’m very excited and honored to begin my term as your 2020 SCCAOR President. First, I’d like to thank Gustavo Gonzalez, your 2019 Association President for his commitment to service and outstanding job this past year. This coming year I will be joined by a very talented leadership team that includes President-Elect Doug Goss, Vice President Lisa Faria, and Secretary/Treasurer Stephen Theard. I look forward to working closely with this team and our Board of Directors to help guide our Association toward some new and exciting goals.

As President, my main goals will be to provide best-in-class member benefits at competitive prices while strengthening the Association, to develop and implement new communications strategies to enhance our member engagement and advocacy impact, and to focus on operational excellence through process and technology implementations aimed at improving productivity and efficiency.

There is a lot to look forward to as we enter this new decade. As REALTORS®, we will face a number of challenges in our market and industry but at the same time we’ll see some exciting new opportunities. SCCAOR recently opened a new Service Center in Gilroy to help serve the needs of our South County residents. The office has a membership center, a REALTOR® Store, and a training room that will soon be hosting classes and other meetings for our members.

Our Advocacy Team anticipates a busy year in 2020. Since the primary election was moved from June to March, candidate interviews and ballot measures started coming early. SCCAOR has endorsed candidates in four out of the five San Jose City Council races, and we anticipate making endorsements in Campbell, Milpitas, Gilroy, Morgan Hill, Cupertino, and the Santa Clara County Supervisor’s race after March.

Measure E (San Jose-only March Primary ballot measure) will continue to tax those who want to buy or sell a home in the form of a massive increase to the local Transfer Tax. This tax increase will take the existing tax from $3.30/$1,000 of assessed value, to $15/$1,000 of assessed value – a 450% increase! We remain firmly opposed and encourage you to vote NO on Measure E.

SCCAOR will also be joining forces with C.A.R. to gather signatures for their state-wide ballot measure, The Family Home Protection and Fairness in Property Tax Act of 2020. I encourage you to add your signature to the list next time you’re in the SCCAOR office.

In our recent annual Member survey, 65.2% of SCCAOR Members said they would consider switching MLS providers if the option were available. In response, SCCAOR has invited the state-wide California Regional Multiple Listing Service (“CRMLS”) to make a special presentation to our members. These presentations will happen on January 14 in our Gilroy office and January 15 in our San Jose office. We hope you will be able to join us to learn about some of the exciting opportunities they have to offer. Your feedback will be immensely helpful to the SCCAOR Board of Directors as we look to address our members’ concerns. You can learn more and register to attend for free here.

I wish you a prosperous new year and I look forward to seeing you at all of our events throughout the year!