by Bailey White
Staff Writer
She barely has time to lock her front door on the way out, but Cathy Whatley has been enjoying her year as the National Association of Realtors president.
“It’s been wonderful,” said Whatley. “It’s far exceeded my expectations of this whole opportunity and it’s well worth the time I’ve had to invest.”
Whatley said she’s quickly adapted to the frenetic schedule; she previously served on the organization’s Leadership Team.
“For the last two years I’ve been traveling extensively so this isn’t a total change of pace for me from last year,” she said. “It’s stepped up some this year, though.”
There have been a lot of back and forth trips between NAR’s main headquarters in Chicago and its legislative headquarters in Washington, D.C. and Whatley has been to California, Hawaii and Peru, where she met with the country’s minister of housing, the U.S. ambassador and the consulate general.
“When we travel internationally, we’re interacting with leaders of that country’s [NAR-like] organization,” said Whatley. “Part of the overall cultural concept is relationship building as well as knowledge sharing. And it allows us to be a little more social than if we were just sitting in a meeting, hammering out issue after issue.”
And there is no shortage of issues.
“We’re seeing challenges across the country with available and affordable homeowner’s insurances,” said Whatley. “I’ve been to a lot of meetings with members of the insurance industry.”
Whatley said a proposed policy establishing rules for online brokerage is another item generating much discussion.
“It’s a very open debate,” she said. “We’ll hopefully be formulating a policy at the May meetings.”
World affairs have also had an impact on Whatley’s travel schedule.
“We were supposed to go to Ireland, but that trip was canceled because it was right as the war was breaking,” Whatley said. “We were supposed to be in Toronto earlier this month, but that conference was canceled because of SARS and our scheduled trip to China, which was set for June, has been postponed until September.
“You would think that when something gets canceled, there would be more time free time, but it doesn’t seem to work that way. Your time ends up getting expanded out to meet other obligations.”
And things don’t slow down at her Jacksonville real estate firm — Buck & Buck — just because she’s out of town.
“I’m here all the time when I’m not on the road,” said Whatley.
In fact, she’s in the middle of planning the company’s new headquarters.
“We’re building a new office building,” she said. “People are saying, ‘What were you thinking?’ We’re at the point now where the contractors need to get to the roof and need the shingle selection and I have maybe two days to make the decisions.”
But Whatley is handling the juggling act just fine.
“What I have found, and what I found seven years ago when I was president of the Florida Association of Realtors, is that you tend to accomplish whatever you’re responsible for in the time you have,” she said.
Whatley will, however, allow herself a few days to celebrate her 25th wedding anniversary.
“We’re going to the Bahamas for three days,” she said.
After her term ends, things will slow down, but not much.
“I’ll serve one more year on NAR leadership team and with 880,000 members there is a lot of request for interaction with leaders,” she said. “After that I’ll be right back at my company, in our new building. And then I’ll have more time to watch my six grandsons play soccer and baseball. There is no lack of things to do.”