Local Policies and Real Estate
As NAR, the NAHB and the people involved in both associations demonstrate, politics and real estate are heavily intertwined, and both entities are nothing if not reliant on the other for their respective goals – legislation and elections on one side, new and returning homeowners on the other – to be achieved. But the similarities do not end there. Politics, just like real estate, may be national in its overall scope, but it’s ultimately defined by the actions of local, micro-level individuals, and real estate is filled with such people, whose professional ambitions infuse their political actions.

Ironically, that’s not how Mark Batinick would have it, in an ideal world. Contrary to many government officials, Batinick never dreamed of political influence; rather, he was perfectly content as an agent for RE/MAX Commercial Consultants and spending his evenings with his five children in his Will County home. But as he explains, the politics of the Chicagoland area have slowly changed his mind, and he’s now running for Will County Auditor as a Republican.

“It was kind of something that built up over time,” Batinick says. “It was just one thing on top of another on top of another, and I’m thinking, ‘Are you kidding me? Are you kidding me?’”

Probably the biggest sign he should get involved, Batinick says, was when he realized the number of people leaving the state of Illinois. “That was really the biggest thing. So about four years ago … was when I realized the impact that our state’s policies had on real estate,” he says.

As a self-professed Republican, government overreach is a big part of Batinick’s political philosophy, whether it’s overly aggressive worker compensation that dwarfs the costs of neighboring Indiana, Illinois’ proposed pension reforms or Cook County’s rates of taxation, which, in Batinick’s words, are “out of this world,” particularly in his hometown of Lansing.

“Where I grew up in Lansing, the idea was, ‘We’re going to tax businesses at a higher rate, because we’re going to protect the little guy,’” Batinick says. “That was the theory. What they did is, they taxed the businesses out of Lansing, and when there’s no businesses left to pay the bills, eventually you have to go back and you have to tax the residents. Well, when you have fewer businesses to tax, and you have fewer jobs, the net effect is, property values go down … in the end, when you get rid of all the businesses, the little guy has to pay for everything.”

Thus, with his frustrations mounting, Batinick finally decided to run for office. He needed 1,000 signatures to appear on the Republican primary ballot for auditor, and he collected more than 2,000, and after running uncontested in the primary, he’s overseeing a modest campaign, one primarily composed of door-to-door canvassing on weekends and preparing for the upcoming debates with his Democratic opponent, Duffy Blackburn.

But before he even considered running for auditor, Batinick was already quite involved in Will County politics; in fact, his activities serve as a blueprint for how to get involved at the local levels of government. In addition to contributing writings for the Illinois Review, a prominent conservative blog, Batinick has also been an active member of For the Good of Illinois, a group focused on creating more accountable, transparent and limited government since 2007. One of the more prominent crusades by the group involved its opposition to the construction of a new administrative office in the Wheatland Township. The group considered the project wasteful, and it rallied community support for its cause, showing up at a township meeting with nearly 200 people in tow and halting the project; the group’s efforts were covered by FOX Chicago. More recently, Batinick spoke before the Joliet Junior College board about its planned expansion of the college’s culinary arts program, an expansion that he thought was wasteful and unwarranted.

Overall, Batinick’s political activities – from composing blog posts for the Illinois Review, to giving speeches at local Tea Party rallies, to attending local government board meetings and discussing board policies with similarly engaged citizens, to knocking on doors for his campaign for auditor – are now as much a professional commitment for him as his real estate business, and in light of his activism, Batinick has bold advice for his fellow agents.

“Get into politics or get out of real estate,” he says. “Your local policies affect your business quite a bit.”