My head is freshly packed with jargon.
I spent much of the last week doing my 45 hours of continuing education for renewal of my real estate license. Overall I'd have to give high marks to the content creators. I reviewed a wide variety of material that is useful to agents, but isn't used all the time. For instance, I haven't done many Starker exchanges...or Baird or Alderson exchanges, either...so the revew of exchanges was both interesting and useful. I'm more likely to have exchange information at the top of my head when a client might be a good fit.
Likewise, the information on the Fair Housing Act was a great refresher on how to make sure advertising and promotion stay within federal regulations. None of us are intentional discrimators these days, but I was reminded in another section that making sure we don't steer clients to specific neighborhoods is good practice anyway. There was another interesting reminder that although real estate agents may have promoted segregation in the past, the NAR has been a leader in fighting to make fair housing a reality.
The most humorous part of the course for me was the class on using the internet. I learned more about modems than I would have liked and sadly, there wasn't a single mention of blogs or social media. They did manage to talk about email, so it wasn't a complete waste of time. Unfortunately, the main thing they stressed abut email was that I shouldn't use colored fonts or bold type. I imagine they would have had apoplexy if they looked at a standard blog today and had to deal with colored fonts, bold type...and pictures.
I shouldn't pick on the course authors for outdated internet information, but it illustrates an important point. This industry is changing so quickly that even officially approved training can be overtaken by reality. The real estate industry is rapidly dividing into those who understand that change is happening all around us and work to keep up with it and those who are just plain lost. I'd say that active membership on this site is a clear indicator that you fit into the first category of agent, the survivors. The vast numbers of "lost" agents have probably never visited this site, never written a blog post, and don't understand the fuss about social media at all.
It's probably too much to expect that a state-sanctioned training course can provide up to date material. On the other hand, on behalf of the "lost" agents, I would hope that before my next four year renewal comes due, the course authors would at least acknowledge trends that are active today.
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