In St. Paul, the St. Paul Area Association of Realtors (SPAAR) and the North Metro Realtors Association (NMRA) say they're working on a plan to become a single association serving 6,600 members.

Merger proponents in both markets say their aim is to increase the level of services provided to association members while keeping costs in check.

Both mergers are expected to produce cost savings, but primarily as a result of increased negotiating power and clout with vendors, rather than drastic cuts in staff and management.

No multiple listings services (MLSs) are being eliminated or consolidated because the associations in both markets already belong to regional MLSs.

Listings impasse sparks merger talks

In Miami, merger talks began spontaneously, growing out of an impasse between two rival associations over access to listings data, said Teresa King Kinney, the former RAMB association executive named as CEO of the merged association.

(The merged association is expected to officially change its name to the Miami Association of Realtors at the end of this month, once its request for a name change is approved by the National Association of Realtors).

RAMB -- the larger of the Miami associations in terms of revenue -- was seeking access to RAMDC's listings in order to feed them into Listingbook, a popular third-party market comparison and client management tool that RAMB provides to its members.

But RAMDC said it wouldn't release the listings data unless RAMB made Listingbook available to RAMDC members, Kinney said.

Residential brokers serving on one of RAMB's three governing boards vetoed that idea, saying they were not ready to abandon the association's policy of providing services like Listingbook only to its own members. The brokers felt that providing services on an exclusive basis gave RAMB a competitive advantage in recruiting, Kinney said.

RAMB brokers decided they would rather provide Listingbook exclusively to their own members, even if it meant Listingbook would have gaps in its coverage of the Miami market.

A meeting was held to attempt to resolve the impasse. When the meeting came to a standstill, RAMB board member Charles Richardson -- regional senior vice president for Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage -- declared "all of this would be a moot point if we were one association," Kinney recalled.

Leaders of both associations immediately got behind Richardson's proposal, scheduling a follow-up merger meeting on the spot

"It was sort of the shock of the century," Kinney said.

The two associations had explored the idea of a merger more than a decade before, in 1998, with negotiations dragging on for nine months, Kinney said. This time, it was different, she said, with terms of a merger finalized in only two additional meetings of two hours each.

The combined association's 36 employees -- down from a total of 44 in 2009 -- serve members from five office locations. The office count was unchanged in the merger.

Kinney accepted an offer to stay on as the merged association's CEO. RAMDC CEO Martha Bullman and one other RAMDC executive elected to receive severance packages, Kinney said.