Real Estate Agent and Realtor Not Interchangeable Terms

It’s true that all realtors are real estate agents but it may surprise you to know that the opposite is not true – real estate agents aren’t always realtors. Debra Gould has made the distinction between the two terms in the Home Staging Glossary by Staging Diva.

“If you look closely,” says Gould, “you’ll see that the word Realtor has a ® symbol after it – an important detail to note.”

The entry for Realtor® in the Home Staging Glossary reads:

People often assume that the term realtor can be used interchangeably with real estate agent. REALTOR® is actually a registered trademark of the National Association of Realtors (NAR) and only their members can properly be referred to as a REALTOR®.

Gould, founder of the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program, cautions home stagers against using the word realtor in your website content. She says, “You can get in trouble because it is a trademarked phrase. When you make mention of a real estate agent and you know they are, in fact, a REALTOR® then you must type the word in capital letters with the ® symbol after it.”

The Home Staging Glossary contains many useful tidbits of information like this. Gould recommends that home stagers take a few minutes to peruse the glossary entries because she has attempted to breathe more life into each entry by adding tips and links to additional articles of interest.

About Staging Diva

The creator of the Staging Diva Home Staging Business Training Program, Debra Gould has staged millions of dollars worth of real estate, including seven of her own homes. She is the president of home staging firm SixElements.com and has trained over 4000 home stagers in over 20 countries start and grow their own businesses.

Debra has gained international recognition through features in major media in the US and Canada including: This Old House, HGTV, CNN Money, CBC National News, CBS Radio, Global TV, City TV, The Wall Street Journal, Women’s Day, Reader’s Digest and more.