Warwick Realtor elected NAR president

(Updated, Nov. 19)

WARWICK – A local real estate agent has been elected the next president of the National Association of Realtors, the powerful trade association.

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Ronald L. “Ron” Phipps, president of Phipps Realty Inc., was installed on Monday as the Chicago-based Realtors’ president-elect for 2009-10. He will take the presidency in November 2010 after spending a year learning the ropes.

Phipps, who was previously the association’s first vice president, became a Realtor in 1978 and was named Rhode Island’s Realtor of the Year in 1995. He served as president of the Rhode Island Association of Realtors in 2000.

Phipps told Providence Business News on Thursday that his election as president was a long time in the making, with people cued up for the position until 2020.

“It’s shorter to become congressman or senator or president of the United States,” he said.

As president, Phipps will represent the 101-year-old group and its 1.2 million members at events, in the press and before Congress.

He already has begun speaking on behalf of the organization. Last month he testified in front of a congressional committee about extending the federal tax credit for first-time homebuyers, which Congress eventually did.

“One of the parts of the position I like is I have a fair amount of opportunity to do lobbying,” Phipps said.

Phipps was also interviewed Tuesday on the American Public Media program “Marketplace” in a segment about the housing crisis.

Phipps said he will be the Realtors’ first president from Rhode Island and only the fourth or fifth from New England. Typically, he said, presidents hail from large states like California that are home to thousands more Realtors than Rhode Island, which has about 4,000.

Phipps added that his service in the volunteer position will help put the Ocean State on the national stage. He plans to invite the national association’s senior leadership to Rhode Island in 2011 for a retreat, which would be the first such gathering held here.

Phipps’ business is concentrated on the residential real estate market, although he also does some work in commercial real estate. His mother started Phipps Realty after their family moved to Rhode Island from the West Coast, and currently five of his 11 staff members are family members.

When he is not selling properties, Phipps said he enjoys sports, travel, reading, music and art, and is an avid swimmer who has completed the Save The Bay Swim and the Chesapeake Bay Swim.

Additional information is available at phippsrealty.com.