The Canadian Real Estate Association has announced plans to turn the real estate portal it owns, Realtor.ca, which had a reported 121 million users in 2022, into a standalone for-profit firm. The proposal will be discussed at the trade association’s annual general meeting in April. The potential spinoff of Realtor.ca from CREA echoes a similar move NAR made with Realtor.com back in the late 1990s. It operated under operator HomeStore, which went public in 1999 and in which NAR maintained a large equity stake. That stake has waned over the years as the site’s operator changed to Move and then to News Corp, which is now pursuing a sale of Realtor.com. NAR has lost a lot of control of the site. A national listing site offers many opportunities for an association, especially if it maintains control as the site grows and evolves in a separate company. Will be interesting to track how CREA manages this.