New goals for new leadership: New CEO of The Longleaf Pine REALTORS® shares her goals for the association moving into 2025

By Eddie Velazquez, posted Dec 13, 2024 on BizFayetteville.com

Longleaf Pine REALTORS® CEO Anne Rendle (left), stands alongside NC
REALTORS® President Tony Harrington at the at the NC REALTORS® Convention
held in late October. Photo provided by Longleaf Pine REALTORS®.

Anne Rendle, the new Chief Executive Officer of The Longleaf Pine REALTORS®, wants to charter a new path forward for the longtime professional organization of realtors. Her expertise and vast experience in realty, she said, are a fit for her goals to modernize how the organization can best serve its members.

Longleaf Pine REALTORS® Inc. is a professional association that serves the interests of more than 2,400 realtors and business professionals in North Carolina.

“We’re affiliated with the largest professional association in North America, which is the National Association of Realtors. We are a local chapter, where the rubber meets the road,” Rendle said. “We help with education and professional development opportunities for our members. We put on events for them to do networking, and we try to keep them updated.”

Rendle was hired as the CEO of the Longleaf Pine REALTORS® in September of 2024. Her mission is to use her more than 25 years of experience in real estate to modernize procedures and some of the internal operations of the organization to deliver for its members.

Most recently, Rendle was the CEO of the CORE Association of Realtors in Trenton, New Jersey, where she spent more than four years leading more than 4,400 realtors in three counties. There, she also oversaw the upgrading of financial reporting and budget processes, improving data-driven decision making.

She also oversaw digital security upgrades and the growth of reserve accounts from $400,000 in 2019 to $1.2 million in 2023.

Rendle said that a good starting point for implementing changes would be modernizing the structure of the organizations internal committees, sharing that “They are structured in an old-fashioned way,” and one of her goals will be to update some of the organizations policies and bylaws.

She also plans to draw on some of her training from the American Society of Association Executives (ASAE) to modernize the internal governance infrastructure at Longleaf Pine. The ASAE is a membership organization that provides resources, education and advocacy for association and nonprofit professionals. It has more than 50,000 members, including association executives and industry partners, who manage organizations in the United States and around the world.

“I’ve taken a lot of governance training there,” she said. “So some of this work will be about updating our governance documents.”

Although Rendle said she plans on modernizing internal systems, she noted she was delighted to see Longleaf Pine REALTORS® is in great shape in other areas.

“What I was delighted to see was that the hardest thing to fix: the apathy of certain members, or unproductive disagreements among members, is not present here,” Rendle said. “What I found coming here is that this is just such a great group. The staff gets along really well. The members also get along well. People are working together to achieve all kinds of goals.”

Part of Rendle’s expertise, she shared, is her ability to organize goals through a cohesive strategic approach.

“These days, given how there's so many challenges that are just accelerating all the time. You have to try and stay up to date with technology and how that changes things,” she said. “So some of that I think leadership, particularly boards of directors, need to have their eyes above the horizon and be looking as far out as they can. It is even more important now because we are trying to build an association for the future.”

That future vision partially includes getting everyone on the same page.

“That is the goal of me and the directors and the officers,” Rendle said. “What I brought to them was the idea of a volunteer and staff partnership. That way we are rowing in the same direction and respecting each other's roles and lines of authority.”

Rendle said she is confident in her ability to lead, particularly because of her varied experience. She said she has worked in multiple roles, including some in customer service and food service.

“Every job you have gives you more knowledge that you can bring to your next job and experience. I can really help with organization as well, and how to organize the energies of a lot of people,” she said.

One action item Rendle said she could look at in the near future is the size of committees.

“Some of the organization just isn't there, and some of the committees are so large that it's really hard to chair a large committee because everyone in the room should have the ability to speak on every topic that they care about,” Rendle said. “We’re going to have a maximum number on every committee, and it’s not to limit the number of volunteers, because we're gonna try to put everyone who volunteers on a committee. But to have them operate more efficiently and have them be able to gel as a group better.”

You can keep up with the group’s latest developments by going to their website at www.longleafpinerealtors.com or by following their facebook page at facebook.com/ longleafpinerealtors.

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