The reason I think I was elected is that I've done residential and commercial, I've owned and managed a brokerage company and I've had a very broad base of experience. About 80% of our members own their offices or have their own investments, so they understand that residential and commercial work hand in hand to make the real estate industry move. I see the Realtor family as having clout with numbers of membership, feet on the ground to do grassroots work and the funds behind them to get things accomplished.

GlobeSt.com: What type of advocacy do you plan, starting in your role as president-elect, that will help both sides of real estate?

Shelton: The services tax proposal affects both residential and commercial, but it won't affect the real estate industry exclusively. It will affect doctors, lawyers and others. Imagine if you buy a piece of real estate, whether it's an office building or a house. The list of items involved would now have a tax on it: your appraisal, your environmental, your building inspections, your real estate attorney, and on and on. Instead of a page or two of disclosure of costs, you would have ten pages.

This would affect so many segments of the service sector, and the economy doesn't need that right now. The FAR board of directors will make the determination, and they were very loud and clear that they don't want to see sales tax on services—not just on the real estate industry, but on services, period.

GlobeSt.com: What are the key issues that you believe will come up while you are FAR president?

Shelton: Amendment 1 was just the start. It was the only thing on the January ballot and it wasn't good to leave anything on the table. We had to show that the voters, the members of our organization, as well as the general public, really wanted to see something done about property taxes. If that had not passed, the Legislature would have figured the public doesn't care.

From the commercial side, we didn't have the numbers needed in the special session to get a vote through. The 10% cap on commercial is only a start. We will work on trying to reduce that. We're also working toward changing the "highest and best use" property tax basis to where it's more uniform.

Property insurance has to move to a national level because if we don't get help with a federal disaster package or a catastrophe fund, Florida is going to constantly struggle with this issue. I don't think there is an easy solution just here in Florida.

GlobeSt.com: Do you see the lines between residential and commercial real estate getting blurred?

Shelton: A lot of residential agencies handle smaller commercial transactions, such as the dentist's office or the restaurant on the corner. There's a lot of room for residential agents to do it, but they need to understand what they're getting into. You won't see the money from an investment deal for a year, but you might luck out and sell a small one in six to eight months.

A lot of residential professionals want to get into commercial because they hear that's where the big bucks are. A fee on a $10-million sale may generate 1%, or only half a point, where if you sell a $400,000 house you get 5% or 6%. You need to put it in perspective as to what they see as big money. Now that the market has corrected, this is what it's normally like versus selling a property in a day or a week.

GlobeSt.com: Do residential agents create headaches for commercial brokers?

Shelton: Only when they get a call from someone with a listing or a buyer who doesn't quite understand how it works. When I have to explain that a particular property owner won't pay a co-broker fee, they get offended. It's usually people who have never dealt in this side of it. It's a little more difficult, but I think it works out.