Our profession as Realtors is in the top five of professions responsible for helping people with major financial decisions – along with accountants, attorneys, bankers and stock brokers. Our responsibilities and liabilities are enormous, yet we are not doing a good job of policing our members and enforcing minimum standards of competence.

The blame rests with two entities – state licensing departments and managers/brokers.

In my state, Washington, the only requirements for obtaining a salesperson's license are:

• Be at least 18 years of age;

• Complete a 60 clock-hour course in Real Estate Fundamentals;

• Pass the salesperson's exam.

That's it. Not even a high school diploma is required. And the majority of the material covered in the fundamentals class is "ivory tower" and has little to do with the day-to-day practice of listing and selling real estate.

Because of the responsibility a real estate agent and the company bear, common sense says that the licensing requirements are inadequate. For example, in this state, once one obtains a salesperson's license they can go into residential practice, commercial practice, or property management practice.

Anyone who has been in this profession for any length of time knows that these fields are different one from the other and some, such as commercial, have much longer learning curves. State licensing departments should require separate qualifying course requirements, examinations, and licenses for residential, commercial, and property management.

Managers and brokers have a responsibility to supervise their agents, and too many do not.

An example – an agent with a different company attempted to exert his "control" over an agent in an office I was managing, to the extent of being abusive on the phone when my agent faxed him an offer to the fax number shown on the listing, which was his office fax. He called my agent and browbeat her, saying …"Everybody knows I only receive faxes at my home."

I called that agent's manager and asked her to control her agent and to talk to him about cooperating etiquette, her comment was: "Oh, that's just him and the way he operates, I can't control him." What she should have done was to call her agent in, tell him his behavior was totally inappropriate, direct him to cooperate in a business-like manner with other agents, and threaten probation and/or termination if improvements in his business practices were not forthcoming.

Starting with the National Association of Realtors down through the state and local associations, lobbying should be done on state legislatures to do the following:

• Strengthen the prerequisites for obtaining a salesperson and brokers licenses, both should require a college degree, clock-hour classes emphasizing real-world issues, and the passing of a demanding examination;

• Salespersons should be required to have a minimum of five years of documented full-time experience before being eligible to obtain a brokers license;

• Require separate licenses with separate educational classes for the different fields – residential, commercial, property management.

We should also give serious consideration to tightening the language in the Code of Ethics, the enforcement teeth need to be sharpened, and specific conduct that is unacceptable should be included.

Published: December 24, 2004

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