SAN DIEGO COUNTY – Tessa Hultz, former CEO of the Greater Los Angeles Realtors Association, has taken over as CEO of the Greater San Diego Association of Realtors.
Calling Hultz “a superstar,” association President Spencer Lugash said that Hultz will lead the organization “as we enter a critical stage in our industry, facing significant changes in the way business is conducted.”
Real estate agents are still adjusting to a court settlement by the National Association of Realtors that ended the practice in which sellers pay commissions to both their broker and a buyer’s broker.
CEO
Greater San Diego Association of Realtors
“Something that was sort of a standard practice is now a discussion point. All of real estate is kind of a negotiation,” Hultz said. “Change is hard for most of us. Nobody likes change, especially when it comes to how you put food on the table.”
As a result of the settlement, “Some people had to learn new skills, but they’re good skills,” Hultz said.
Agents representing home buyers must now negotiate their fees.
“It makes more sense from the consumer’s standpoint,” Hultz said. “It helps everybody.”
Early in her career, Hultz had to deal with quick and rapid change.
Hultz was CEO of the Long Island Board of Realtors in 2019 when a three-year investigation by the newspaper Newsday uncovered widespread evidence of unequal treatment by Long Island real estate agents of Asians, Hispanics and Blacks.
The experience made Hultz a dedicated advocate for fair housing.
“Our role at the association is to educate them (agents) on the law and also the benefit of providing equal housing. It creates the diverse communities that so many Americans say they want to live in,” Hultz said. “Any act of discrimination in housing is too many and it is illegal. Something I continue to work on, no matter where I’m at, is equal opportunity and housing. It’s an important discussion we needed to have as a nation.”
People Business
Hultz has worked in realtor association management since 2005, starting at the Columbia Board of Realtors, where she was director of education. She was named CEO in Los Angeles in 2022.
Hultz said that the San Diego and Los Angeles associations are about the same size and “neither one of us is the only (realtors’) association in the market, so members have choices of where they want to join.”
President
Greater San Diego Association of Realtors
Where the two markets differ is in the price of real estate. The median price of a resale family home has topped $1 million, but is still less expensive than Los Angeles. She said the median price in Los Angeles is $1.2 million.
“Since it is a little bit more affordable, it actually has a higher home ownership rate,” Hultz said, adding that 54.5% of single-family homes in San Diego County are owner-occupied compared to 46.1% in Los Angeles.
Adding to San Diego’s edge in having more affordable homes, Los Angeles has higher transportation costs and longer commutes.
“Those sorts of factors go into whether a community is desirable,” Hultz said.
The Year Ahead
With interest rates starting to decline, Hultz said that she expects San Diego County home prices to moderate in 2025.
“Home values are still going to increase because there’s just so much demand, but maybe not as much as we’ve seen in 2024,” Hultz said. “I think it will be a good year.”
Helping to temper home prices is an improving inventory of homes up for sale, but, “buyer fatigue is a problem,” Hultz said, as some prospective buyers stop looking after months of low inventory with little to choose from.
Inventory levels also remain below what’s needed for a balanced market, which for several years has been tipped to a seller’s advantage.
“The lack of inventory is not something special or unique to the San Diego area. Tons of metro areas are struggling to get enough inventory,” Hultz said. “At the end of the day, we haven’t been building enough to keep up with demand.”
A graduate of the University of Missouri Columbia, Hultz majored in psychology and minored in international studies and Japanese.
“I wanted to be in the people business,” Hultz said. “I was an aspiring homeowner in my late 20s when the opportunity to work with a real estate association came up.”
Greater San Diego Association of Realtors
FOUNDED: 1905
Headquarters: Kearny Mesa
President: Spencer Lugash
CEO: Tessa Hultz
Business: real estate trade organization
Members: 13,000
Website: www.sdar.com
Contact: 858-715-8000
Notable: Known at the time as the San Diego Realty Board, the Greater San Diego Association of Realtors had 26 members when it was founded in 1905
