We in America practice a peculiar form of democracy. Unlike much of the democratic world, we elect Congress without proportional representation. Our head of state and our head of government are the same person, the president. We have no snap elections and no votes of no confidence that can bring down a coalition government.
Instead, nearly every federal race is a single-member, winner-take-all contest. So when the political winds blow hard in one direction, either party can be swept along by a current strong enough to carry it to victory.
Last night the river broke its banks.
But the phenomenon is hardly new. As I watched the returns last night and checked in with our chief lobbyist in Washington and political operative friends around the country, they were quick to point to two midterms in particular: 1994 and 2006. History rarely repeats, but it often rhymes.
In both 1994 and 2006, a frustrated electorate found a compelling alternative that combined new candidates and a new message. Soaring health care costs. An unpopular war. A government that wasn’t held to account. But the midterm winners of those two cycles didn’t just ride that frustration. They built organization in places the other side had neglected.
Late money poured in, but it didn’t decide either election. Organizing wins. It always does. Money without people does not lead to power. Last night that lesson was affirmed once again.
The midterms, AI and real estate
That is precisely why the American Real Estate Association is building a 50-state strategy of its own to organize and energize the residential real estate industry. Our constituents are the licensed agents of this country, and for too long the public and policymakers have misunderstood their value and the vital role they play in the American economy.
But here is the good news: Our cause belongs to neither party. It is rooted in principle.
And for us, organizing is not an abstraction. The fights ahead will be won or lost in state capitals by people who show up long before the cameras do. Think about the one that is approaching us the fastest.
In the years ahead, we will face challenges in our industry like never before. AI systems are already marketing themselves to consumers, promising to replace human agents with AI ones. That promise is a fantasy. AI has no fiduciary duty. It holds no license. It does not answer to a regulator, an ethics board or a state licensing body. It carries no errors-and-omissions insurance. It simply has terms of service.
There is no federal real estate license. Every state decides who can practice and what an agent owes a client. So this fight will be won in statehouses, not in Washington.
That is why ARA is launching an AI Task Force that will work with our state chairs on a state-by-state approach to this emerging threat to consumers. We have already drafted legislation, which we hope to see introduced in several states in 2027, that would require a licensee to stay in the loop.
Make no mistake, we embrace AI and the efficiencies and remarkable benefits it brings to agents. But we must remain a bulwark against tools that harm consumers, tools that claim to do our job without the licensing requirements and obligations that come with it.
Now the work begins
That work doesn’t happen in the heat of an election cycle. It happens after, when passions cool and policy can take shape. No one captured that fever better than a young Frenchman who toured America nearly two centuries ago.
In 1835, Alexis de Tocqueville wrote that an important American election could be considered “a period of national crisis.” Then he described the buildup: “The citizens are divided into hostile camps, each of which assumes the names of its favorite candidate; the whole nation glows with feverish excitement; the election is the daily theme of the press, the subject of every private conversation, the end of every thought and every action, the sole interest of the present.”
And then, in a rhyme of history you can likely feel today, he wrote: “It is true that as soon as the choice is determined, this ardor is dispelled, calm returns and the river, which had nearly broken its banks, sinks to its usual level; but who can refrain from astonishment that such a storm should have arisen.”
Today that river, swollen by billions of dollars in campaign spending, social media hot takes, podcast prognosticators and all the machinations of modern politics, begins to recede. But not for long. Within weeks, the jockeying for 2028 will begin, and with it a new cycle of fever and rising water.
So we must act now, before rancor overtakes reason. ARA looks forward to working with the new majority and with members of both parties on the issues our members and the American public care deeply about: housing costs, supply, affordability, AI, taxes, zoning and much more.
Tocqueville was astonished by the storm. But what struck him even more about America was not our elections. It was what Americans did between them. “Americans of all ages, all conditions, and all dispositions constantly form associations,” he wrote. He saw in those associations the real engine of self-government: ordinary citizens, organized around a shared purpose, refusing to leave their future to whoever happened to be shouting loudest that season.
That is the democracy that matters. Not the one that floods every two years and recedes the morning after, but the one that runs at its usual level every single day, in committee rooms and council chambers and statehouses where the rules of our profession are actually written.
The storm has passed. The river is settling.
Elections are decided in a single night. Democracy is decided every day after. Now is the time. Let’s get to work.
Jason Haber is co-founder and president of the American Real Estate Association (ARA). He is also president of NYRAC, the New York Residential Agent Continuum; chairman of Built for New York, a civic organizing group supported by ARA; a member of the REBNY Board of Governors; and a licensed associate real estate broker at Compass.
